


Home For the Holidays

by Rubywolf



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Christmas, Eventual Smut, F/F, Human AU, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, tw: past abusive relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:42:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21679204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubywolf/pseuds/Rubywolf
Summary: It's been a year since Yasmin Khan was home in Sheffield, and a winter storm grounds her plane in America at exactly the wrong time. Yaz finds herself stuck in an unfamiliar town at Christmas, with nobody but the charming woman from the plane to keep her company.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 91
Kudos: 417





	1. December 20

**Author's Note:**

> I have like three Christmas presents to make in the next 20 days, another fic that I'm halfway through posting, and the last thing I need in my life is Christmas-themed fic that I'll have to finish before the holiday season is over.
> 
> So what did I do? I decided to write another fic.
> 
> Go me.
> 
> Anyway, this was half inspired because I was watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles and got a brilliant idea, and half because I just really like the Colorado Springs area and hiking and wanted to put these two nerds there.

_Yaz (12:33 pm): omg  
Yaz (12:33 pm): Ryan if they delay this plane one more time I s2g I’m walking back to Sheffield  
Ryan (12:34 pm): Nice. I’ll mail you some floaties so you can get across the ocean  
Ryan (12:34 pm): what’s the delay now?  
Yaz (12:35 pm): they diverted the last flight so now they have to find another plane. It’ll be Christmas day before I get home at this rate.  
Ryan (12:35 pm): _😂😂  
_Yaz (12:35 pm): I’m serious, there’s supposed to be a major snowstorm developing too. If we don’t get out of here soon I really am going to have to walk it  
Ryan (12:36 pm): it’ll be good to see you though, if you ever make it here  
Ryan (12:37 pm): well let me know when you take off, if I’m asleep just tell me where and when to pick you up  
Yaz (12:39 pm): k, thx Ryan_

Yaz switched apps on her phone to check the weather one more time, noticing with a hollow feeling in her stomach the thick bands of blues and purples streaked across the country, indicating winter weather. She looked up from her phone and glanced up to check the flight tracking screen yet again, hoping against hope that after all this, they weren’t just going to cancel the flight and call it a day. She’d been awake since 3am, she’d been at this stupid airport since 6, and she would have sold her left arm to be able to just teleport home at this rate.

She stretched her legs out in front of her and stood up. She was sure to have plenty of time before her flight started boarding, so she picked up her belongings and meandered over to a little gateside bookshop to find some new reading material for the plane- having already finished the book she’d brought, she thought sourly to herself.

Yaz browsed the cramped shelves decorated with obviously fake evergreen garlands, pushing aside silly-sounding self help books and romance books with half naked, oiled-up muscle men lifting swooning dames off their feet. Maybe a good mystery, she thought, turning her attention to another shelf, and pulling a book down to read the cover.

“That’s a really good one,” a voice to her left surprised her, speaking with an accent so very close to home, one so very out of place here in southern California. Yaz glanced up to see a cute blonde woman struggling to carry a pile of books to the register while still dragging her bags with her. “A bit science fiction, but if you can stand alien planets, the mystery will keep you guessing the whole time. It’s actually one of my favorites.” She grinned. 

Yaz laughed. “Thanks. I might have to read it now,” she said, tucking it under her arm.

“You won’t be disappointed,” the woman told her, smiling and gracelessly spilling her choices onto the checkout counter, apologizing profusely to the bored-looking cashier.

Yaz browsed for another ten minutes or so, before bringing three books up to the register and stuffing them in her bag along with the receipt. She meandered out into the food court area of the terminal and bought a stupidly expensive sandwich, and slowly made her way back to the gate to eat, check the weather again, and start on one of her books.

Yaz was about five chapters into the book the woman had recommended- and she had been right, it was a gripping story- when an announcement crackled over the speakers that a plane was being prepared for boarding, and they would be on their way shortly. Yaz shot off a quick text to Ryan, letting him know she was finally on her way and she would update him from New York, shocked to note that it was well past two thirty already. She threw away her trash and stowed her new book in a front pocket of her bag, so she could reach it easily on the plane, and waited.

Twenty minutes later she was happily tucked away in her window seat just in front of the plane’s wing, where she was sure to have a fantastic view of the country as it melted away beneath her. Her incoming flight to California, not quite a year ago, she’d been stuck in an aisle seat and had only seen glimpses of the rivers and mountains below. She’d also been largely preoccupied with worries about whether she’d made the right decision to move so very far away, but all in all, she had to admit it had worked out this far.

It had felt extreme, at the time, putting an entire continent between her and her past, and she had missed her family like crazy the first month or so. Really, she still missed them terribly, and she felt like she’d missed out on so much in the past year. Ryan’s nan had passed away after a terrible accident at work, and Yaz had been devastated that she hadn’t been able to be there for her best friend during that time. Sonya had been married shortly before Yaz had moved, and she’d just had a little boy not even a week ago. Yaz still wasn’t used to the idea that she was an aunt, or that her mum was a _grandma_ , and she was just a tiny bit nervous that so much had changed that it wouldn’t quite feel like the home she’d left. Then again, she supposed that’s what happened when you hit your late twenties. Things changed.

Yaz pulled her new book out of her bag and set it in her lap, wanting to have it at the ready for later. She watched the airline employees scurrying about on the tarmac, loading luggage into the belly of the plane, waving their little orange wands to direct traffic. She was so ready to get home.

“I thought we were _never_ going to get out of here!” A familiar voice sounded above her as the blonde woman from the book shop flung a bag into the overhead compartment and flopped into the seat next to Yaz, digging in a smaller bag until she found her phone. “Oh, hey, I remember you! Did you get the book?”

Yaz smiled and held it up. “Five chapters in, already. Thanks for the recommendation!”

“It’s literally one of my favorite books. Every time I reread it I notice something new. It’s blown my mind at least four times now.” The woman grinned. 

“I’m hoping to finish it before I get home,” Yaz told her. “I’m not expecting to have a lot of time to read once I get there.”

“Ah, home for the holidays. Where’s home?” the woman asked.

“Sheffield,” Yaz told her.

“Oh, you’re joking! I’m from Sheffield, too. Small world.” The woman grinned again.

“Well, I could nearly guess from your accent,” Yaz joked. “What are you doing all the way out here in San Francisco?”

The woman pointed to the logo on the bag she was now stuffing under the seat in front of her. “I teach astrophysics at Stanford,” she told Yaz. “Been out there about two and a half years now.”

“Like it?” Yaz asked.

“It was hard at first, but it’s grown on me.” The woman paused, as if she was going to say something else, then changed track. “How did you get to California?”

Yaz laughed. “That’s a really long story.”

The woman smiled. “Well, it’s a long flight.”

Yaz couldn’t help but smile too. “Probably not long enough, honestly. The shortest version is that my boss recommended I transfer out here for work.”

The woman nodded and leaned forward to look out the window, and the light from the sun caught her hazel eyes and highlighted the edges of her blonde hair, and it suddenly struck Yaz that she looked like a renaissance painting of an angel like this. “What do you do for work?” she asked, pulling Yaz out of her thoughts.

“Hmm? Oh, I’m with the police. I’m Yaz, by the way,” she offered, hoping to avoid talking too much about work.

“Hiya, Yaz! I’m Jo. Jo Smith,” the woman stuck out her hand, and Yaz shook it, feeling a bit silly. 

“Jo Smith?” Yaz asked, raising an eyebrow. “That sounds like the sort of name you give when you don’t want to give your real name,” she teased.

Jo rolled her eyes. “If you must know, my full first name is Josephine. My parents thought they’d get all clever pairing a stupid first name with a common last name. I’ve hated it my whole life,” she confessed. “Ooh, look! We’re pushing off.” She pointed out the window and Yaz felt the plane rock gently as it backed away from the gate.

“It’s about time,” Yaz agreed. “I’m so worried we’re not going to make it with all that snow developing in the Midwest. Especially with how late it’s gotten.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Jo waved her hand. “We’ll probably just fly right over it.”

Yaz nodded, wishing she could agree confidently, but she’d been refreshing her weather app every twenty minutes or so all day, and she was sure the flight they were on was one of the last that was going to make it from one coast to the next for a few days.

She watched the ground outside the window race by as they took off, giving way to treetops and grids of streets and finally, puffy white clouds tinged with the yellow tones of the sun sinking behind them. If there was one thing Yaz hated about the winter, it was how early the sun set. Here it was, 3:15 pm, barely an hour and a half of precious daylight left. Yaz felt the sun had no business clocking out so early if she wasn’t generally allowed to, either. 

Yaz alternated between watching the clouds grow ever bigger and more colorful as the sun sank, and reading chapters of her new book. Jo had put in some earbuds and was leaning back peacefully with her eyes closed, and once again Yaz couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was at peace. Yaz could see the red audiobook cover she was listening to on the screen of her phone, although she couldn’t quite make out the title- not that Yaz was snooping, of course.

Yaz was just relaxing enough to really get back into her book when the turbulence started. The plane shuddered, sharp, jerky movements like a car losing a wheel, and Yaz gripped her armrest, peering out the window as if she was going to see they’d hit something at 40 thousand feet. She was being silly, she knew it, but she _hated_ this part of flying.

The plane shuddered again, and Yaz looked down at the snow-covered mountains below, thinking idly how terrible it would be to crash into them. She might be police, but she wasn’t prepared for true survivalist stuff. The plane groaned and made a sharp bank to the right, making Yaz grab for her open cup so it didn’t spill into her lap, and Jo finally opened her eyes and looked around.

Yaz had to stifle a shriek when it suddenly felt like the plane had dropped out from under them, then became very heavy in her seat as the plane regained its altitude. 

“It always gets a little bumpy over the mountains,” Jo told her, pulling out an earbud and pausing her book. 

“A little?” Yaz muttered, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “I can’t take four more hours of this.”

“D’you want to know how turbulence works?” Jo asked, pulling off her other earbud and leaning in, launching into an explanation of the physics of flight and pockets of high and low air pressure before Yaz could say no. It was fascinating, in a way, and it actually did manage to distract Yaz from the sheer terror of feeling like they were falling out of the sky, especially when Jo began explaining how planes managed to stay up in spite of it. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the pilot’s voice came over the intercom after a particularly rough patch that Yaz couldn’t save her drink from in time. “Due to inclement weather, we have been asked to divert to Denver. Please stand by for information about getting to your final destination.”

Yaz groaned internally, unsure if she was more annoyed that she was dealing with yet another delay or relieved that she wasn’t going to have to fly all the way to New York in this kind of turbulence. “I just want to get home,” she confessed to Jo.

Jo nodded. “At least we’ll be over the mountains, though, landing in Denver. The next flight should be much smoother.”

Whenever that will be, Yaz wanted to say. If it was inclement weather that was delaying them, they would have no choice but to wait it out. She peered out the window and noticed ice crystals forming on the glass, white and symmetrical against the deep blue of the sky as dusk fell completely. It occurred to her that they would be beautiful if she wasn’t so concerned about them taking her plane down. 

Not five minutes later, the pilot was back with another announcement, that they were being re-diverted to Colorado Springs, where there were fewer planes trying to make emergency landings. Yaz could hear the grumbles and complaints from the other passengers, but by now she was mostly just hanging on for dear life and hoping they made it safely to the ground.

“I’ve always wanted to visit Colorado Springs,” Jo told Yaz, peering out the window. “I hear the Garden of the Gods is beautiful.”

“Well, maybe you can visit it,” Yaz said tensely, twisting her hands in her lap as more turbulence rocked the plane. 

Jo laughed. “Maybe.”

An hour and one extremely bumpy landing later, angry passengers piled out of the airplane and into the concourse. The blast of icy wind that assaulted Yaz as she stepped off the plane and onto the ramp made her wish she’d brought a heavier jacket. “Well, Yaz, it was nice to meet you, and good luck getting home,” Jo told her as they stepped into the terminal.

“Yeah, nice to meet you too,” Yaz waved as Jo dragged her things into a restroom, and Yaz continued on towards the baggage claim area.

Yaz stood by the baggage carousel for an interminably long time, waiting for the bags to arrive. She took her phone off airplane mode and checked to see if she had any messages, but she had none.

_Yaz (6:47 pm): Ryan I’m gonna start walking_  
_Yaz (6:47 pm): jk but seriously the weather got bad and we landed in Colorado instead. No idea when we’re getting out of here._ 😭😭  
_Yaz (6:48 pm): sorry if I woke you up_

She closed out the message app and opened her email instead, looking for the email the pilot promised the airline would be sending with flight vouchers for when the weather cleared, and a digital Visa card with a bit of money for food or hotels. Yaz had heard a few particularly rambunctious customers arguing that they deserved far more compensation for the delay they’d been put under, and while Yaz agreed that the money probably wouldn’t go very far, it was at least better than the airline dropping them off in this city and leaving them to it.

Yaz’s main concern, however, was finding a hotel room. It was Christmas, after all.

She pulled up an app and her worries were confirmed. There was only one hotel within the city limits that had any availability, the rest were all at least an hour’s drive away. Yaz quickly typed in her information, hoping to confirm a room, but the app errored out. She bounced anxiously on her feet as the bags finally started to come down the carousel, and to her dismay, hers was the last bag off the ramp.

Figures, she thought bitterly. Luck never seemed to be on Yaz’s side when she was travelling.

She managed to locate a shuttle to take her to the hotel where she’d tried to book. The driver was polite enough, but drove like he was trying to navigate the bus on a solid sheet of ice. Which, Yaz, supposed, looking out at the streets, he probably was.

She lugged her stuff up to the front desk, where a sweet-looking older lady stood behind the desk. “Please tell me you have a room, anything at all,” she begged.

The lady gave her a sympathetic smile. “I’m so sorry, I just gave out my last room.”

It was all Yaz could do not to cry. “Ok… well, thanks, I suppose. You don’t happen to know of any other hotels in the area that might have a room? It’s just me. I wasn’t even supposed to be here, my flight got diverted.”

“Oh, yeah, the storm moving in,” the lady nodded. “I’m sorry, honey, but it’s Christmas week. Pretty much everyone will have been booked solid since Thanksgiving.”

Yaz sighed. “Yeah. I understand. Thanks anyway.” She turned, dreading what other options she might have. “Can I hang out here in the lobby for a few minutes while I make other plans?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” the lady said. “There’s tea and cookies on the table out front, too. Help yourself.”

Yaz helped herself willingly to a large, chewy chocolate chip cookie, realizing suddenly that she was ravenously hungry. That sandwich back in the airport hadn’t done much, and it was nearing dinnertime. She hesitated before grabbing a second cookie and sitting down on a large, plush sofa in the entryway.

She brought up the app on her phone again, looking at her choices of hotel. The closest one was an extremely sketchy looking one all the way in Denver, at least an hour and a half drive from here. There were others, even farther away, in tiny little towns Yaz couldn’t hardly locate on her phone’s map app unless she zoomed in to nearly street level. She checked AirBnb- sold out, unless she wanted to stay a three hour’s drive into the mountains. And then she was going to have to either find an Uber that would take her, or figure out how to get back to the airport and rent a car. 

Yaz grew more and more frustrated, the more she looked, and she was desperately starting to wish she’d made her travel plans for a day earlier. The last thing she needed was to be stuck in some crappy little town, or worse, stuck at the airport until the weather cleared.

“Excuse me, I’m so sorry, my room key doesn’t want to work,” a familiar accent shoved it’s way into Yaz’s mind, and she looked up to see Jo approaching the front desk and holding out the plastic card. She brightened when she saw Yaz on the sofa, brushing cookie crumbs off her jeans. “Hiya, Yaz! Don’t tell me you’re my neighbor for tonight.”

Yaz sighed wearily. “I won’t, then. They’re just sold out. Actually, I think everyone’s sold out nearby. Closest availability is like an hour and a half away. Turns out Christmas is a really bad time to have a travel emergency.”

“Hmmm. That is a quandary.” Jo gave her a little smile and paused. “You know, this might be a little unorthodox, but if you can’t find a room you’re welcome to stay with me.”

Yaz paused, too. “Oh, I couldn’t do that to you.”

“Well you’re not, I offered. More than one person’ll fit into one of these rooms, you know, and a bit of company never hurt me.”

Yaz hesitated. She barely knew the woman, but then again, sharing a room with her did seem like a better option than trying to sleep at the airport or trying to Uber halfway across the state. And most hotel rooms did have two beds, after all. “Are you really sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Come on, then.” She took the replacement key from the lady at the front desk and waved Yaz to follow her down the hallway.

Yaz followed, feeling grateful but super awkward. Jo swiped the new key card in the lock and it clicked open. Wearily, the two ladies dragged their bags into the room and flipped on the light.

The room was decorated nicely but neutrally, a large TV on a dresser placed in front of one massive King sized bed, draped with a white comforter.

“Oh… oh, no, I thought she said this was a room with two beds,” Jo frowned at the room as though she could glare it into sprouting another bed.

Yaz awkwardly rolled her luggage backwards, towards the hall. “Jo, I really do appreciate it but I can’t impose on you like this. Thanks for the offer, really, but I can’t ask you to share with me.”

“Well, you didn’t ask, Yaz, I offered, and the offer still stands. I mean, obviously I’m not going to demand you stay, but if you’d rather stay here than trek halfway across America to find a room, you’re welcome to. Besides, that’s a massive bed. We’ll each practically have our own zip code! We were much cozier on the plane.” She stepped forward and tossed her things into the corner by the bed.

Yaz laughed, considering it. “I think that bed is about as wide as the whole plane itself.”

“See? We could invite two other people and a flight attendant tonight and still have enough room.” Jo grinned and kicked her shoes off.

Yaz hesitated for a moment, knowing she only had a few minutes to back out before she was locked in to her decision. But where else would she go? This was certainly better than the alternative. “Are you really, really, _really_ sure you don’t mind?”

“Positive.”

Yaz kicked off her shoes, too. “Ok, if you’re sure. Seriously, though, thank you.”

Jo grinned. “’Course.” She rummaged through a bag until she found a phone charger and plugged it in. “Are you starving? I could eat an entire horse right about now. Wonder what restaurants are nearby.”

“Actually, I am starving. We could always order from Uber Eats or something,” Yaz suggested. “That way we don’t have to walk. What do you like? I’ll order.” She pulled up her phone and sat on the bed next to Jo, scrolling through the options and placing the order when they’d chosen what they wanted.

Jo almost immediately changed into pajamas, baggy blue plaid fleece pants and a black t-shirt, and wasted no time in making herself comfortable. She flopped down on the left half of the bed and flipped the TV on, blonde hair fanning out across the pillow as she browsed through the channels.

Yaz took her time changing into her leggings and baggy sweatshirt that she usually slept in. She tied up her hair and washed her face and hoped beyond hope that this night wasn’t going to be super awkward. She could practically hear her mum’s disapproval- spending the night with a stranger was absolutely something her mother would have avoided at all costs. Really, Yaz could hardly believe she’d agreed to it at all.

“Food’s here!” she heard Jo call to her, and Yaz finally emerged from the bathroom. The smell of the food hit her, and it might not have been fine dining but at the moment it smelled like the best food in the world.

“Oh, man,” Yaz said. “I have never been more excited for something to eat in my life.”

Jo grinned and carefully laid the food containers out on the foot of the bed, located the plastic forks and knives, and handed one to Yaz. “How do you feel about nature documentaries?” she asked, indicating the TV.

“Love them,” Yaz said, carefully sitting on her side of the bed and trying to eat with some semblance of manners. “Until the poor antelope gets eaten by the lion.”

Jo laughed. “Do I need to start singing the Circle of Life?”

Yaz grinned. “If you must.”

“Maybe when I’m done with my pasta.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Yaz laughed, and they ate in relative silence, the documentary educating them on the dietary habits of some exotic lizard. Yaz couldn’t help but notice that Jo seemed to take in absolutely everything, listening to the documentary with a cute little tilt of her head as though she was making a mental note of everything she was hearing. She assumed Jo was one of those people with a mind like a steel trap, especially given her earlier science lesson on flight. 

Yaz imagined she probably made a fantastic teacher. 

When they’d finally eaten all they could and cleared away their containers, Yaz wasted no time in crawling under the comforter as close to her edge of the bed as she could get without falling out. She plugged in her extra long phone charger and browsed through Facebook and Reddit intermittently, hoping to take her mind off the encroaching awkwardness of bedtime. It didn’t help that Yaz found Jo absolutely adorable, from the way she moved to the way she seemed genuinely excited about almost everything. Yaz could only hope that she wasn’t going to wake up tomorrow morning in an unconscious snuggle with her.

Yaz arranged one of the many pillows between them, so if she did hug something in her sleep, it would be the pillow instead. Better safe than sorry.

Jo only watched the documentary for another few minutes before yawning and crawling under the covers, too. “D’you want the lights out now?” she asked. “I’m fine either way, but now that I’ve eaten and it’s all warm and cozy in here, I can’t keep my eyes open.”

Yaz nodded. “Off is fine. I’ve been up since 3, I’ll probably be out before the lights are at this rate,” she told her.

Jo switched off the lights, and Yaz felt the bed move as Jo crawled under the sheets again. “I’m going to apologize in advance if I snore or move around too much or get all cuddly in the middle of the night,” Jo said with a yawn.

Yaz laughed. “If a cuddle is the worst thing that happens overnight, I’ll be fine.”

She heard Jo chuckle, and a few minutes later Jo’s breathing evened out and Yaz knew she was already asleep.

Jo had been right, though, this bed was big enough that Yaz thought they would have had to make a conscious effort to cuddle if they were going to do it. And it was somehow both more and less awkward being in the bed with Jo already asleep.

Yaz turned over so she was facing the window, her back to Jo, and realized she should keep her family in the loop, too. She turned the brightness on her phone screen way down and texted her mum.

 _Yaz (9:12 pm): Hey mum, sorry if I woke you up. Plane got diverted thanks to snow, so I’m in Colorado until it clears up. I’ll keep you updated. Miss you and hopefully see you soon!_ 💕

Yaz put her phone on the bedside table, and tried very hard not to think about the virtual stranger sleeping next to her as she drifted off to sleep.


	2. December 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is completely unpolished, literally just type it out and post it kind of drivel, but at least I'm having fun with it. :D
> 
> I changed the warnings on this fic- honestly it’s not super graphic but I thought I’d better tag it anyway.

Yaz awoke the next morning to the sound of the shower and the smell of coffee, and she was beyond confused. 

She sat up slowly, hair escaping her bun and falling in her eyes, and examined her surroundings. The curtains were mostly drawn, but one of them was pulled halfway back to expose a solid white sky. White, kind of firm hotel bed. Large pillow laying lengthwise up against her back. The other half of the bed was obviously slept in, covers thrown back and a phone charging on the nightstand next to the empty space.

It took Yaz a solid thirty seconds to remember where she was, who she was with, and why.

She picked up her phone off her nightstand and squinted at it blearily. 

_Mum (1:37 am): No rush to get here Yaz, just be safe! We’ll see you soon._

_Ryan (3:22 am): Aw that sucks.  
Ryan (3:23 am): So you’re stuck halfway across the united states all by yourself? You have the worst luck travelling.  
Ryan (3:23 am): Seriously, what vengeful god did you piss off? Didn’t you get stuck in London last year too? _

Yaz chuckled to herself. Trust Ryan to bring up that horrible trip. That was just before she’d moved to San Francisco, and her plane in London had been grounded for a maintenance emergency literally minutes before they’d taken off. They’d evacuated onto the runway, and she’d chosen to just rent a car and drive back to Sheffield. She’d hated every minute of the drive.

_Yaz (8:02 am): yeah yeah shut up.  
Yaz (8:02 am): and actually I’m not exactly alone. There weren’t any hotel rooms left and this woman from the airplane offered to let me stay with her. She’s cool.  
Ryan (8:02 am): omggggg Yaz  
Ryan (8:02 am): gives new meaning to layover_ 😉 _  
Yaz (8:03 am): OMFG RYAN NO  
Ryan (8:03 am): No???  
Yaz (8:03 am): NO!!!  
Yaz (8:03 am): WOW  
Yaz (8:03 am): I doubt she swings that way anyway.  
Yaz (8:03 am): I mean she’s cute, she kind of reminds me of Tiffany, but no.  
Yaz (8:04 am): Tiffani*  
Ryan (8:04 am): Wait Tiffany from school or Tiffani your ex?  
Ryan (8:04 am): Oh  
Yaz (8:04 am): Autocorrect. Tiffani my ex. Blonde hair, hazel eyes. Super excitable about p much everything, actually  
Ryan (8:05 am): just your type you mean_ 😉 _  
Yaz (8:05 am): omfg  
Ryan (8:06 am): well here’s hoping this one doesn’t ditch you like Tiffani did. She sucked.  
Yaz (8:07 am): omgg I’m not dating her I’m literally sharing a hotel room bc it’s better than sleeping at the airport  
Ryan (8:07 am): Nan watched enough cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies for me to know where this is going  
Yaz (8:07 am): they don’t make cheesy hallmark Christmas movies with lesbians, turd. And don’t pretend like you weren’t sitting there watching them with her.  
Ryan (8:08 am): right ok well when you catch feelings for her I will happily say I told you so. What’s her name anyway? _

Yaz groaned aloud and set her phone aside, regretting entering this conversation with Ryan. He was going to be insufferable now, and God did she wish he had someone for her to tease him about in return. She got up and opened both curtains, staring out at the foot of snow on the ground and the thick white flakes filling the air. What had looked like fog from her vantage point on the bed was really the low-hanging white clouds, and Yaz couldn’t even see the street below. They were only on the second floor. 

Ugh. She was _never_ going to get home.

She re-tied her hair into a pineapple bun to get the loose strands out of her face, and picked up her phone again to stare at her conversation with Ryan.

_Yaz (8:11 am): Jo.  
Yaz (8:11 am): But seriously though there’s nothing going on. _

The shower turned off, and Yaz decided her conversation with Ryan was over. For now, at least. She was sure she hadn’t heard the last of it from him. Instead, she flipped over to her weather app to see nearly the entire state covered in varying shades of deep blue, and she sighed. It was unlikely there were going to be any flights running today.

Jo emerged from the bathroom after a few moments, hair tied up in a towel turban. “Morning, Yaz!” she exclaimed brightly as she claimed her cup of coffee from the little machine and dumped a few sugar packets into it. “How’d you sleep? I was out like a light.”

Yaz smiled. “Fine, I guess.” She yawned. “Are you always this chipper before coffee?”

“Oh, just you wait until the caffeine kicks in.” Jo grinned.

Yaz laughed and started her own cup of coffee before hopping in a nice, hot shower. The steam and hot water seemed to melt away the tension from her failed day of travel yesterday, and she felt like a new person when she finally emerged twenty minutes later and retrieved her coffee.

Jo was cross-legged on the bed, laptop opened in front of her, her hair down and curling into little waves as it dried. “Did you get an email from the airline?” she asked, watching Yaz let her hair down out of her towel.

“Yeah, last night,” Yaz told her, sitting next to her on the bed but keeping a respectable distance. “Did you see the weather though?”

Jo nodded. “Doesn’t look good, does it?” She patted the bed next to her and motioned to a plate full of breakfast foods she’d clearly taken from the continental breakfast. “Want something to eat? I got way more than I’ll eat, I didn’t know what you’d want, so you can have your pick.”

“Mmmm. Thanks,” Yaz told her, taking a bagel and some jam and digging her laptop out of her bag. “Let’s see what flights are looking like,” she said as she connected to the Wifi and prepared her breakfast.

“Not so good, from what I’m seeing,” Jo replied thoughtfully, clicking around and slowly eating a tiny cinnamon roll. 

Yaz quickly discovered that Jo was right. Colorado Springs and Denver airports had cancelled every flight for the day and up until about noon the next day, and all the flights for the following few days weren’t going east. 

“We could always fly into Atlanta and then on to home,” Jo suggested, pulling up a new inquiry. “There’s a flight leaving Denver tomorrow evening to Atlanta.”

“Yeah, for fourteen thousand dollars,” Yaz pointed out.

“Surely that’s a misprint.”

“I don’t think it is,” Yaz countered. “Look. We could drive to Phoenix, then to Atlanta, then on home, but that one’s twelve thousand.”

Jo glared at the computer like she could make it change the price through sheer power of will. “It’s too bad I actually have to get back to Sheffield. Look at all the flights tomorrow to San Francisco.”

Yaz hummed thoughtfully and closed her computer. “Family counting on you being there for Christmas?” she asked.

“No, haven’t really got any family left back home,” Jo said, pushing her laptop back and taking another cinnamon roll. “I do have some business I apparently have to close out before the end of the year, though. You’d think email and fax machines didn’t exist, the way they were going on about it.” She rolled her eyes. “How about you? Is your family going to be terribly upset if you don’t make it in time?”

Yaz sighed. “No, we don’t really do Christmas, exactly. But Dad always gets the day off, and Mum sometimes does too, so we just make a day of it and have fun. It’s more just that I haven’t seen them in about a year, my sister’s just had a baby I haven’t even met yet, and I’m still going to have to be back to work that first week in January. So if we don’t get out of here soon, I won’t be able to spend any time at all with them, really,” Yaz continued. 

Jo nodded. “Well, the snow can’t last forever.”

“Yeah, it’s just got to clear out from like half the world so I can get home,” Yaz joked. 

Jo laughed and pulled her computer back to her, taking one last rueful look at the airline booking screen and closing the window, revealing a beautiful desktop photo of a woman, curly hair tied into a fluffy ponytail and shining a flashlight into the night sky, the Milky Way core twinkling in the sky behind her. “What a cool picture,” Yaz commented.

“D’you like it?” Jo asked with a little smile. “I actually took that.”

“No way,” Yaz’s mouth dropped open.

“Yeah. I got into astrophotography after I started teaching astrophysics, it’s actually not super hard to get a picture like that if you can just get your subject to stand still for the exposure.” She laughed, looking fondly at the screen. “Some of it you need a telescope for, but I love getting the Milky Way like that one.”

“Surely that wasn’t in Sheffield?” Yaz asked.

“No, that was in Canada, near Banff. River, my friend, in the picture, she always wanted to go, so we did a bit of traveling. She kept teasing me that I kept wanting to stay up all night taking pictures instead of sightseeing in the daytime, like apparently normal people do.” 

Yaz laughed. “I’ve always wanted to travel. I love seeing new places, I just never have the time to get out of work and do it. How did you manage?”

Jo smiled and closed her laptop, laying it on the floor near the bed. “Well, when you teach, you get the whole summer off. River and I both taught at the university back home, and they didn’t much care where we did our lesson plans from, so long as they got done in time for the next semester. She taught history and archaeology, so we’d always pick a few really interesting historical places to visit over the summer. If you haven’t, you’ve got to see the Mayan ruins. Absolutely incredible.”

Yaz smiled. “I’m seriously so jealous right now. And that’s awesome that you didn’t have to travel alone. I honestly don’t think I could do it by myself.”

“What you need is a travel buddy!” Jo declared. 

Yaz smiled. “Yeah, I wish. None of my family cares to travel, though, and my friend Ryan can’t really get any time off his job with the position he’s in now. I thought my ex boyfriend might be interested in making a long date out of it but all he ever wanted to do was Netflix and chill.”

Jo scrunched her face. “I mean, Netflix and chill is alright for a while, but to never get out and do anything else?” she asked. “How boring is that!”

Yaz laughed. “See, that’s what I said! But Corey only ever had one thing on his mind. That’s mostly why I broke up with him,” she admitted, a note of bitterness creeping into her voice. “And I’ve been paying for it ever since.”

“How do you mean?” Jo asked, tilting her head curiously.

“Ah, well,” Yaz started, twisting her hands nervously. “I broke up with him for a lot of reasons, but he never could take no for an answer. He went a bit psycho when I told him it was over.”

Yaz could still remember that fight in perfect detail, when she’d broken up with him. He’d been pestering her yet again to get her ex girlfriend, Tiffani, to agree to a threesome- which was never going to happen anyway, Yaz had told him, as Tiffani had suddenly decided she wasn’t into women anymore and had ghosted Yaz after six months of dating. Corey hadn’t really cared _who_ they might invite, though, and had continued to pester Yaz until she realized, one day, that the only reason he was interested in her was because she was bi and he thought that was the fastest way to get a threesome under his belt. Yaz had dryly suggested they find another guy to invite, knowing he’d never be interested in that, and he’d gone _livid_.

“In hindsight, I should have known he was crazy,” Yaz admitted, fidgeting nervously. “But I was on the rebound and he was available. That’s a mistake I won’t make again. I broke up with him, and he just went into this silent rage. It was actually scarier than if he’d started yelling,” she admitted again.

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Jo asked after a moment, keenly taking in Yaz’s demeanor as she spoke.

“Um,” Yaz paused. “No, not exactly. Like I said, he kind of went psycho. I didn’t hear from him for weeks, but I started finding hidden cameras around my flat. And I turned them in to my boss, I knew it was him, but they couldn’t trace them to him so we couldn’t do anything. I’d see him following me at work, but I couldn’t get close enough to arrest him and he’d always take off before my coworkers could do anything. He did all kinds of other stuff, too, he got so creepy I eventually transferred to a precinct in London for about a half a year, but he found me there and broke in to my new flat while I was sleeping and killed my cat.” Yaz’s voice caught and she twisted her hands together again. “Just left her there, all cut up on my kitchen counter for me to find when I woke up, and it was pretty clear the implication was that he could get in and do whatever he wanted to me. And he had an alibi, not a good one, but enough that he wouldn’t be convicted. He was always so careful in that regard. That was the incident that made my boss suggest that I look into moving again. And he had some connections in San Francisco, so I moved.”

Jo pulled her into a hug without even asking, and _damn_ if that wasn’t exactly what Yaz needed at the moment. Yaz wrapped her arms around her and buried her face in Jo’s shoulder, noting the smell of the hotel shampoo that still hung in her hair. 

“I’m so sorry you had to deal with all that,” Jo replied after a minute. 

“It’s alright,” Yaz said, pulling out of the hug before she decided she wanted to stay there forever. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to put a damper on the day.”

“Nonsense,” Jo waved her off. “You haven’t done anything of the sort. Tell you what- we’re stuck here for today, at least. Let’s see what restaurants are open and get a proper meal, and we’ll find a Redbox or something and get as many Christmas movies as we can stand. Take our minds off our troubles, eh?”

Yaz smiled. “That sounds like a great plan.”

“Brilliant!” Jo declared, jumping off the bed. 

Yaz had to admit, her enthusiasm was contagious, and she quickly wrestled her hair into a long braid before digging her coat out of her luggage. Jo was ready to go before Yaz was, and she spent the extra time looking up the closest Redbox on her phone. “Shall we?” she asked when Yaz was ready. 

“Onward,” Yaz told her.

They crunched through the snow across the street and cut through some parking lots, fresh snow falling silently around them. “I’ve always loved real, proper snow,” Jo told her, skipping through some fresh accumulation and very nearly falling on her bum.

Yaz laughed. “You definitely strike me as the kind of person that loves a snow day.”

“You bet! It means no school, usually, which also means I get a day off.” Jo grinned and scooped up a handful of snow, patting it into a ball and throwing it at Yaz.

Yaz shrieked and ducked. “Oh, is this the game we’re playing? Because I never lose a snowball fight.”

“Ooh, that sounds like a challenge.” 

Yaz quirked an eyebrow, scooped up a snowball, and hurled it at Jo. It hit her shoulder with a satisfying smack, and Yaz gave her best impression of an evil laugh as she stooped to make another snowball.

Jo grabbed another handful of snow and darted behind a car in the parking lot that had obviously been there a while with several inches of snow piled on top, and Yaz took the opportunity to load her arms with snowballs. As quietly as she could- which was very hard as she couldn’t seem to stop giggling like a kid- Yaz crept around the side of the car and was immediately hit square in the face.

“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry! I wasn’t aiming for your face!” Jo rushed over, but Yaz was doubled over with laughter. 

“I am so going to get you for that,” she said, shaking the snow off her face and throwing her snowballs at Jo with as much force as she could muster.

The snow war raged for quite a while as they played, throwing snow and chasing each other in circles around the car. Yaz managed to sneak up behind Jo and drop a snowball down the back of her shirt at one point, prompting a scream that Yaz was sure was going to bring some poor retail worker out to see what was going on. The fight only ended when Jo’s foot caught a patch of ice and she tumbled to the ground, laughing but unhurt, and Yaz went to go help her up and slipped too, landing on top of Jo and making her laugh even harder. They managed to right themselves and tripped up to the main doors of the Target where the Redbox was located. 

“Hey! They’re open, why don’t we get popcorn too?” Jo suggested, peering in the doors. 

“Sounds good to me,” Yaz agreed. “It’ll be nice to get out of the cold for a few minutes too.”

“Definitely.” Jo strode confidently into the store.

Yaz followed as they meandered around the nearly empty store, looking for the popcorn and stopping to get distracted by peppermint bark and tacky Christmas themed coffee mugs in the shape of snowmen. 

“It’s a good thing I’m technically travelling, because I love goofy coffee mugs,” Yaz told her. “And Target always has a way of making me want all kinds of crap I don’t need.”

Jo laughed. “You think you’re coming in for popcorn. You leave with half a week’s worth of groceries, shampoo, and an instant pot. I’ve been there,” Jo sympathized.

“I’m glad it’s not just me.”

“Nope. And for the record, I love my instant pot.”

Yaz laughed.

Twenty minutes later, they had a basket rapidly filling with snacks and drinks, and they stood in front of a wall of popcorn debating the merits of movie theater butter versus kettle corn, and Yaz’s phone chirped, indicating a text message.

_+44 114 555 9283 (12:01 pm) I know where you are_

Yaz’s blood ran cold, her head snapping up as she looked around at the empty aisle. She couldn’t think of anyone back home that would have her number whose number she wouldn’t have saved, too, and she could only think of one person who would leave her such a vague and implicitly threatening message.

She suddenly had that terrible feeling that she was being watched, despite the fact that they were probably the only two shoppers in the store at the moment. How could he have found her, all this way away? And did he mean he knew where she was now, right this minute, in Colorado? Or just that he’d tracked her to America?

“Yaz?” Jo asked, confused.

“Sorry,” Yaz said, locking her phone and putting it back in her pocket. “Must have been a wrong number.” She gave a tight smile, hoping it was convincing enough, and turned back to the popcorn. “Let’s just get one of each,” she said, grabbing two boxes and tossing them into the basket.

“Something happen?” Jo asked, concerned.

“Er… I don’t know yet,” Yaz said. “Let’s just grab our movies and go before we buy half the store,” she said, trying to joke.

Jo nodded, dropping the subject and picking up the basket. “Onward, then!” 

Yaz followed her to the self checkout, peering over her shoulder every few minutes but still seeing nobody but herself and Jo. They hurried out to the Redbox and Jo began browsing through the movies.

A car door in the parking lot slammed, and Yaz spun around to see a figure striding through the snow towards them. “Jo… Jo, we need to go,” Yaz begged, tugging on her sleeve and backing away. 

Jo looked up, watching Yaz’s panicked reaction and glancing towards the doors as the hooded figure strode past them into the store without even looking towards them. She sighed. “Ok, seriously Yaz. What’s wrong?”

Yaz chewed on her lip, watching the person disappear into the store and sagging with relief. “I just… I thought… Okay, so, a few minutes ago I got this text.” She pulled her phone out and showed it to Jo. “And all I can think is that it’s got to be Corey. What if he knows I’m here? What if he’s going to try to do something while we’re here? I don’t want you to get caught up in all this,” she worried.

Jo read the text and frowned at Yaz’s phone. “Well, my initial thought is that it’s really unlikely he knows you’re here in Colorado Springs, since you weren’t even supposed to be here in the first place. You didn’t put anything on social media that you were here, did you?” she asked.

Yaz shook her head. “No, I only use Facebook to see what my family's up to, I never post to it, and I have all my location stuff on my phone and computer turned off.”

“So he’d have to be really, really good to know where you are right this minute. It seems much more likely to me that he somehow got your number and is just trying to scare you.”

“Yeah but how would he get my number? It’s an American, California number! It’s not like he could just look it up.” She paced in a small circle, trying to stay warm. “And if he does know I’m here, and where I’m staying, that puts you in just as much danger as me.”

Jo slung the shopping bag over her elbow and took both of Yaz’s hands in hers. “Yaz, I’m afraid of no one. If he finds us at the hotel, there’s cameras all over the place. He won’t be able to come after you without getting his face on camera, and even if he does get up to our room, he’ll have me to deal with.” She gave Yaz a little smile.

Yaz couldn’t quite return it. “You don’t deserve all of this, though,” she worried.

“Well, neither do you. And while you’re here, you’re not dealing with him alone.” Jo gave her hands a little squeeze.

“I’m so sorry, Jo,” Yaz told her, chewing her lip again.

“Don’t be.” Jo smiled. “Come on, let’s pick out some movies.”

Despite her better judgment, Yaz did feel a bit reassured, and she let Jo distract her with a fairly wide selection of Christmas movies. They picked out several and added them to the shopping bag before walking down the road to a steakhouse Yaz had found on her phone and Jo had enthusiastically agreed to.

They were seated in a cozy little corner of the steakhouse by a fancy Christmas tree, and they both pulled off their gloves and made themselves comfortable as Jo ordered a bottle of wine, which arrived moments later and they placed their orders.

Jo poured each of them a glass and took a sip, giving a blissful smile as she swallowed. “Good stuff. Did you try it yet, Yaz?”

Yaz smiled. “I’m not really much of a drinker,” she said, pulling her glass towards her and giving it a sniff before she took a sip. “Oh, but it _is_ good.”

Jo was grinning. “See?”

Yaz took a bigger sip. “Really good, actually.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table and smiled back. “You’re not trying to get me drunk, are you?” she teased.

Jo put on a face of mock offense. “Of course not! Unless, of course, you want me to get you drunk,” she said, and maybe it was wishful thinking, but Yaz could swear she sounded like she was flirting. “In which case, we might be able to work something out.”

“Hmmm,” Yaz took another sip, trying her hardest not to stare at Jo, her cheeks pink from the cold and her wavy blonde hair catching the lights from the tree. “Don’t tempt me.”

Jo grinned and took another sip of wine when Yaz caught her watching her. “So,” she said after a moment. “You want to travel. Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?”

Yaz thought about it for a minute. “Iceland,” she decided at last. “I’ve always wanted to try skiing, and I’ve always wanted to see the northern lights.”

“Oooh. Interesting choice,” Jo replied. “I’ve seen the northern lights from Canada, but Iceland would be amazing. I’ve never been.”

“Where would you go?” Yaz asked.

Jo thought about it, gently swirling the alcohol in her glass and letting it catch the light while she thought. “There’s a lot of places I’d love to go, and a lot of places I’d love to go back to,” she said after a minute. “But I think Bora Bora is near the top of my list. Crystal clear blue water, sandy beaches… or maybe I’m just cold today,” she laughed. 

“What was your favorite place you’ve already been to?” Yaz asked.

“Bruges, Belgium,” Jo answered immediately. “The entire town looks like it was plucked out of a fairy tale. We went there, oh, must have been four or five years ago now, and the whole time we were there it was like time had stopped, like you’d stepped into a book and could just stay there as long as you liked,” she answered dreamily. “The only problem was leaving and having to step back into the real world,” she laughed.

Yaz had a thought as she finished off her glass of wine. “How do you get around in all these countries if you don’t speak the language?”

Jo shrugged. “Guidebooks, a lot of the time. In some countries, you can find a lot of people who want to practice their English and you can get around that way. And I do speak seven languages, so that helps.”

Yaz felt her jaw drop. “No way.”

“English, Spanish, French, Russian, Hebrew, Japanese and Arabic. I keep coming back to Chinese but you lose it so fast if you don’t practice,” she made a face.

“When did you have time to learn all those languages?” Yaz asked.

Jo shrugged and sat back as their food arrived. “I dunno, you just kind of pick it up when you’re out and about.”

Yaz shook her head. “You’re incredible, you know that?”

Jo grinned. “I do try.”

Jo entertained Yaz with travel stories as they ate, and for most of the walk back to their hotel room. Yaz had barely had two glasses of wine, but she was feeling warm and fuzzy inside, most of her worries forgotten as she threaded her arm through Jo’s as they walked back to the hotel room in an attempt to stay upright. Jo let them into the room, laughing. “You really are a lightweight, huh?”

“I told you!” Yaz flopped on the bed with a grin and kicked off her shoes. “I’m not much of a drinker.”

Jo kicked off her shoes and tossed her coat and gloves into a corner. “I guess not! Okay, which movie first?” she asked, flopping on the bed next to Yaz and holding out the DVDs.

“Hmmm.” Yaz picked one out of the pile. “I’ve never seen this one, let’s go for that.”

Jo sat straight up and plucked the DVD out of Yaz’s hands. “How have you never seen National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation??”

“I dunno, I just haven’t!” Yaz sat up to take off her coat too and tossed it over a chair near the bed. 

“Well! You are in for a treat!” Jo started the movie and clambered back onto the bed, curling into a ball like a cat right next to Yaz. 

Yaz sprawled out across her side of the bed and lost herself in the movie, still very conscious of Jo right next to her, close enough to touch if only Yaz knew for sure she was reading the signals right. And as tipsy as she’d gotten, she didn’t want to project her wishful thinking onto the situation.

Three movies, four bags of popcorn, and two sodas later, Jo had drifted off to sleep curled up next to Yaz, hugging a pillow with the most peaceful expression. Yaz watched her sleep for a minute, thinking over the funny stories she’d told about her travels, the snowball fight, the way she’d immediately been on the defensive for Yaz when Yaz had been worried. 

Yaz sighed and turned out the lights, snuggling down under the covers and plugging in her phone. She opened her messages and switched over to her conversation with Ryan, deciding to leave him a message for when he got up in the morning.

_Yaz (9:38pm): Shit.  
Yaz (9:38pm): I think I’ve caught feelings. _


	3. December 22

Something was chasing Yaz.

She didn’t know what it was, only that it was some kind of four legged beast. _Tiger_ , her brain screamed, but she couldn’t know that for sure, she hadn’t gotten a good look at her pursuer. She pushed her body harder, faster, but her legs moved slower and slower, like she was running through waist-deep water. Except she wasn’t in water, she was on land, and if she could just move _faster_ …

Yaz startled awake, heart racing, and squinted against the sudden brightness of the room as she tried to calm down and remember where she was. 

Hotel.

Snow. 

Jo.

Where _was_ Jo, now that she was thinking about it?

Yaz sat up and squinted at the room around her, looking for clues, but it didn’t take her long to locate Jo, the spare hotel blanket wrapped around her like a cocoon, sitting in a flimsy chair on the small balcony with her hands wrapped around a paper cup of coffee. Yaz only wondered what on earth she was doing out there for a fraction of a second, until she caught the view beyond the balcony.

Yesterday, the view out the window had been a pane of solid white, but today… oh, today, an imposing line of mountains loomed in front of a clear, brilliantly blue sky. Snow peeked through the lines of trees and ridges of the mountains, reflecting the morning sun and turning the view in front of her an almost eye-numbing white. 

Yaz couldn’t quite tear her eyes away from the sight as she slid the glass door aside and stepped out onto the balcony with Jo. She meant to comment on the postcard view they had, but the next words out of her mouth surprised even her. “How are you not freezing to death out here?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself in a futile attempt to keep warm.

Jo smiled. “Well, I’ve brought a blanket,” she defended herself, but Yaz could hear the shiver in her voice. “I couldn’t not enjoy this view, though, for as long as I can stand it out here.”

“It’s incredible,” Yaz agreed. 

“That one, right there, the big one,” Jo said, pulling an arm out of the blanket to point, “That’s Pikes Peak. Fourteen thousand and some odd feet tall.”

“No way,” Yaz said.

Jo nodded and took a sip of her coffee before tucking her arm back inside the blanket. “Makes me want to get out there and go hiking,” she said wistfully. “Haven’t had a good hike in years.”

Yaz nodded, then suddenly had a thought. “Couldn’t we, though? The airport’s still closed until noon, and flights East yesterday weren’t looking good. We’re still here until tomorrow, at least, right?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Jo said thoughtfully. “Let’s check and see.”

They stepped back inside, the heat from the hotel room suddenly feeling extremely cozy in comparison with the cold outside. Yaz picked up her phone and decidedly ignored several texts from Ryan in favor of pulling up the airline app, perching on the edge of the bed and scrolling through the options. 

Jo remained cocooned in the blanket, but perched on the bed immediately next to Yaz, peering over her shoulder. “Doesn’t look good, does it?” she asked.

“Nope. Nothing heading East today,” Yaz confirmed. “And look- they’re cancelling flights tomorrow, too. What’s that about?” she asked, flipping over to the weather app to see another band of snow projected to move through that evening.

“I’m not psychic or anything,” Jo said, “But I bet by the time this second band of snow moves across the country and the flights start up again, it’ll be after Christmas. We may as well get cozy here.”

Yaz nodded. Yesterday, the thought of being stuck here for the rest of the week would have been nearly unbearable. Today, though, knowing she was stuck here with Jo… well, she was alright with that. She grinned. “So, hiking, yeah?”

Jo grinned back. “Hiking. What kind of clothing did you bring? It’s going to be cold out there.”

Yaz got up and pawed through her luggage. “I’ve got a heavy winter jacket, gloves, a couple jumpers, jeans…” she paused. “Trainers aren’t going to cut it in the snow, are they?”

Jo shook her head. “You’ll probably want a good base layer, too. Which is about the same stuff I need if we’re going to do this.” She shrugged off the blanket and picked up her own phone. “I bet there’s a shop somewhere nearby where we can get some hiking clothes.”

“Tell you what,” Yaz said. “I’m gonna shower while you look that up. Unless you want to shower first?” she asked, pausing.

“Already did,” Jo said, tapping away on her phone. “You are one heavy sleeper. Slept right through me drying my hair and everything. Course, I should have guessed when I woke up nearly on top of you and you barely moved.”

“What?” Yaz squeaked, sorry she’d missed it.

“I told you! I’m a snuggler. Don’t necessarily mean to be, though,” Jo said. 

“Well, next time, wake me up, I always enjoy a good snuggle,” Yaz said cheekily, darting into the bathroom with her change of clothes before Jo could respond.

Yaz spent the next ten minutes wishing the shampoo could wash away her _serious_ case of awkwardness and seriously overthinking what Jo might have taken away from her comment, but when she emerged from the bathroom Jo seemed perfectly normal. 

“So, good news!” Jo enthused as Yaz took her hair down from her towel. “There’s a shop nearby that sells a lot of outdoor stuff, so we’ll definitely get what we need there. And there’s a car rental place just down the road, so we won’t have to Uber to whatever trailheads we pick. Already reserved a car,” she grinned.

Yaz’s excitement only grew as Jo spoke. “I’ve never been hiking in real mountains before,” she admitted. “I honestly can’t wait.”

“Oh, you’re going to love it,” Jo declared. 

Yaz tied her hair in a messy bun and requested an Uber while Jo looked up nearby hiking trails, and within minutes they had a car waiting to take them to the rental facility. They debated the merits of a couple different trails, looking up whether or not the roads were clear enough to get to the selected trailheads, until they reached the car rental facility and thanked the Uber driver.

“You got the hotel, I’ll get the car,” Yaz insisted as she handed her card and license to the pimply-faced young man working the counter.

He typed away with a bored expression for a minute before looking up at her. “All’s I have is a pickup truck. That alright?” he asked.

Yaz shrugged. “If it’ll get through snow, that’s fine.”

He grabbed a key and started typing again. “It’s four wheel drive so you should be fine.”

Yaz bounced on her feet excitedly. She could not _wait_ to get on the mountain with Jo.

“Kay. Truck’s out front. Drive safe,” the agent said, handing her back her license and the car key. 

Yaz could have actually skipped to the vehicle in her excitement, until she actually saw what she was expected to drive. 

The pickup truck was not a little one like her coworker drove. This thing was a bright, Pepsi can blue, at least two sedans in length, and she had to climb up to get into the driver’s seat. 

Jo was cracking up as she climbed into the passenger side. “I feel like I need to make a joke about Americans always having to do things bigger. Are you going to be okay driving this?” she asked. 

Yaz paused. “Let me drive it to the shop and I’ll let you know.” 

Between the size of the vehicle, the six inches of snow on the roads, and Jo positively giggling in delight with this turn of events, Yaz nearly couldn’t stop laughing herself. “You have to get a picture of me driving this so I can send it to my mum. She’s going to die when she sees this,” Yaz told her. 

Yaz parked the Beast, as she had already nicknamed it, and Jo hopped out of the passenger seat and skipped around the side to get a picture of Yaz in the drivers’ seat. Yaz sent it to Ryan as they picked their way through the parking lot and into the store. 

_Ryan (4:01 am): OOOOMMMGGG I knew it  
Ryan (4:01 am): this is where I say I told you so  
Ryan (4:01 am): I toooooooold you so  
Yaz (9:13 am): [1 attachment: IMG7392]  
Yaz (9:13 am): Your granddad’s not the only one who can drive a bus!! Haha!  
Yaz (9:13 am): and yeah you did tell me so, shut up  
Ryan (9:15 am): omg yaz what are you driving?? And why???  
Yaz: (9:15 am): We’re going hiking!! Omg it is seriously so pretty here when it’s not dumping snow. I’ll send you more pics later.  
Ryan (9:15 am): ooh make sure you get your gf in one, I wanna see her  
Yaz: (9:15 am): I s2g I will run you over with my beastly pickup truck now that I know how to drive it _

Yaz pocketed her phone with a grin, turning her attention to Jo, who was bouncing around the shoe racks looking for a good hiking boot. “Ooh, and you’ll want a nice warm pair of socks, too,” Jo was saying as she pulled a pair of woolen hiking socks off an endcap and tossed it to Yaz. “Let’s see. You’ll want a waterproof shoe. Something like… these, maybe.” 

Jo and Yaz spent the next ten or fifteen minutes trying on every pair of shoe in the store until they each decided on a hiking shoe they liked, then they wandered off to find some warmer clothing. Yaz browsed around and picked out a few pairs of leggings and a few thermal shirts, and it didn’t even occur to her that she’d lost Jo until she held up an outrageously printed shirt and found she was alone. 

She glanced around and finally spotted Jo in the men’s section, happily loading up her arms with jumpers. Yaz joined her, laughing. “What are you doing?” 

“Well, first of all, men’s clothing usually has pockets,” Jo said, holding up a fluffy green hoodie that Yaz immediately wanted. “And look!” Jo held up a North Face fleece and stuck her hand in the pocket all the way up to her elbow, revealing that the entire front panel of the fleece was pocket all the way up to the chest. “I could carry around a small child in this! And it’s on sale!” 

Yaz laughed and found a fluffy green hoodie just like Jo’s in her own size. “We’ll match, how about that?” 

“Perfect. That way if one of us gets lost, the rescue team will know who to return us to.” 

Jo made a few recommendations for Yaz- some thinner thermal shirts to wear under the hoodie, which she could wear under her winter jacket, and a hat that would cover her ears. Yaz picked out a nice thick flannel shirt, too, just in case the hoodie was too fluffy to wear under the jacket, and they made their way to the checkout with their arms full of gear. 

A few hundred dollars later, they’d loaded their purchases into the truck’s back seat and were on their way back to the hotel to change. “I’m going to have to buy a new suitcase to get all this home,” Jo said, pulling tags off her purchases. 

“I’m never going to hear the end of this from my family,” Yaz agreed. “I bought enough clothes to get me through the New Year,” she laughed, digging in her pockets for her phone as it began ringing. Yaz frowned at the caller ID. “It’s my boss.” 

“He knows you’re on vacation, right?” Jo asked. 

Yaz nodded and answered it. “Hello?” 

“Hey, Yaz, it’s Captain Adams,” he said hesitantly. “Did you make it back to England alright?” 

“No, I got stuck in the storm,” Yaz answered. “We made an emergency landing in Colorado.” 

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry,” the captain told her, sounding genuinely apologetic. “You, uh, you didn’t come back to California, then, did you?” 

“No?” Yaz asked, starting to get concerned. “Why?” 

She heard the captain sigh on the other end of the line. “We got a call about a break-in from an apartment complex late last night. Turns out it was yours.” 

Yaz’s stomach seemed to flip upside down as she put the Beast into park at the hotel. “My apartment complex, or my flat?” 

There was a pause. “Yaz, it was your apartment. Someone broke in and absolutely ransacked the place. We’ve checked security camera footage around your apartment, but we don’t have any leads at this time.” He paused again. “The leasing office is repairing the broken window first thing tomorrow morning, and they’ve temporarily got it covered up, but frankly, I’m just glad you’re safe.” 

Yaz caught Jo, watching her with concern, and she reached into the backseat to grab her bags. “I know who it was,” she told the captain as she followed Jo inside. “My ex boyfriend’s been stalking me for… well, years, really. I thought he wouldn’t be able to find me here, but…” she trailed off. 

The captain switched into business mode. “Tell me about the suspect.” 

Yaz gave him a description and gave him the cliffs notes version of how Corey had gone psycho on her as Jo let them into their hotel room. Yaz dumped her purchases in a corner by her luggage and plopped down onto the bed as she answered questions, flipped through her phone and found a photo of Corey and texted it to her boss. 

“Yaz, hey, I hate to cut you off, but I’m getting another call that I absolutely have to take. Can I put you on hold for a minute?” the captain asked. 

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Yaz said as his line clicked off, and she turned on speakerphone and set the phone forlornly on the bed next to her. 

“At least you weren’t there when it happened,” Jo said. “That could have been bad.” 

Yaz realized she was shaking, and she twisted her hands nervously together. “I just wish I knew how he found me.” 

“Facebook, maybe?” Jo asked. 

“No, I don’t post my location on Facebook,” Yaz said, chewing on her lip. 

“Could someone else have tagged you?” Jo asked. 

Yaz started to shake her head, then paused. “Oh no.” She opened the Facebook app and checked her tagged photos, and sure enough, a week ago the precinct admin Kristine had tagged her in a photo of their workplace Christmas party. “Oh, no…” she repeated. 

Jo sat on the bed next to her thoughtfully. “Have you ever tried to set a trap for him?” 

Yaz looked up. “What do you mean?” 

“If he thought he knew where you were going to be, do you think he’d try to confront you?” 

Yaz frowned. “I dunno… why?” 

The phone clicked back on as Jo was talking. “Suppose,” she said thoughtfully, “we set up something that would make him think you were going to be somewhere tonight, and then you had your colleagues go undercover and wait for him to break in. Could you catch him that way?” 

“Maybe,” Yaz said slowly. 

“I’m back,” the captain said through the speakerphone. “Who else is there? What are you saying about going undercover?” 

“Er…” Yaz hesitated. “This is my friend Jo,” she explained. 

“Hi, Yaz’s boss,” Jo spoke up without any hesitation whatsoever. “Suppose we laid a trap for him. Like say I posted something on Facebook about Yaz staying at my place until her flat gets fixed. If he comes to break in to my place, you could have officers there to catch him.” 

The captain paused. “We’re not really in the business of endangering anyone to catch someone.” 

Jo shifted to lean forward towards the phone eagerly. “Yeah, but I’m not even there. I’m in Colorado, too, with Yaz, so I’m not in danger. I’ve got a timer on my lights, so it’ll look like someone’s home, but nobody will actually be in danger. Besides, he’s out there actively hunting down a police officer. Isn’t that the kind of guy you want to catch before he succeeds?” 

Yaz stared at Jo in awe for a minute. The absolute guts it took to speak to a police captain so assertively… and on her behalf… Yaz was absolutely floored. 

The captain didn’t respond for a minute. “Yaz, you said this bum’s been after you for a year?” 

“Two, technically,” Yaz replied when she’d gathered the brainpower to respond. 

“I’ve got the staff tonight. I’m down to give it a try. You wanna lock this guy up?” 

Yaz looked up at Jo. “I really can’t ask you to do that! You’re inviting him to break into your place. That’s ridiculous.” 

“Already told you, Yaz, I’m afraid of no one. And it’s just stuff.” Jo shrugged. “The only thing in that flat that’ll be annoying to replace is my Monstera plant, and I think that’s a rather unlikely target, don’t you?” 

Yaz was speechless. 

The captain spoke up. “Let’s get some detail. Where are we setting up?” 

Jo gave the captain her address and suggested a couple of spots that officers might be able to hang out undercover. They nailed down a few details, and Jo pulled out her phone and pulled up Facebook, discussing how to phrase the bait post. 

A minute later, Yaz’s phone pinged with a Facebook notification from Jo. 

_Jo Smith: Hiya Yaz! You can come by anytime after 5, I should be home by then! Do you need a ride back to your flat for the window repair people tomorrow?_

Yaz bit her lip. An obvious sleepover. True, it was entirely false, but Corey- and Ryan, and her sister, and probably others- were going to read SO much into that. But the post had already been made, and Yaz hoped to whatever higher power was out there that this trap was going to work as intended, because she was going to have so many people wanting all the juicy details. 

“We’ll be in touch soon,” Captain Adams was saying. 

“Mmmkay, bye,” Yaz said, hanging up and tossing the phone on the bed and burying her face in her hands. “Oh my god, I cannot believe we’re doing this,” she moaned. 

Jo smiled and placed a hand on Yaz’s shoulder. “With any luck, give it twenty four hours and your nightmare will be over. C’mon. Let’s get our hike on. He can’t stop us from having fun while we’re here.” 

Yaz barely dared to hope that Jo was right. Instead, she yanked on her new clothes and shoes. “So where do you want to hike?” she asked, hoping to take her mind off things. 

“Let’s do Garden of the Gods today,” Jo said, shamelessly stripping off her jeans- Yaz pointedly looked away, hoping she wasn’t blushing too hard- and tugging on her new leggings before putting the jeans back on over them. “For one, I’ve always wanted to go. For another, I think it’s going to be about the only place we can safely drive today. Some of the other trailheads might be tricky to get to in the fresh snow.” She pulled on her new green hoodie. “It won’t be quite as strenuous as a hike through the mountains, I hear there’s a lot of paved and well-maintained trails.” 

“Sounds good to me,” Yaz agreed. 

They waddled back out to the Beast, now several layers of clothing thicker. Jo pulled up a map on her phone and navigated them to the park. 

Yaz couldn’t stop staring at the scenery as she found a good spot and parked the Beast. She’d never seen anything quite like it before. Red, almost orange rocks jutted out from the ground, several stories high and topped with the fresh snow. Trails wound their way in between the formations, snow-covered trees dotted the ground around the trails. In fact, if it wasn’t for the trees, Yaz would have sworn they had landed on a snowy Mars. 

Jo looked like a kid at Christmas, grinning at the scenery and pulling Yaz forward towards the trails. Yaz mostly let her lead the way, pulling out her phone every now and again and taking pictures that absolutely did not do the scenery justice. Jo stopped at every informational sign along the main trail, absorbing the information with as much acuity as she had the other night with the nature documentary. 

Jo also entertained Yaz with random facts she’d picked up about the Rockies as they walked. Jo had done a lot of hiking in the Canadian Rockies, and seemed to know a great deal of information about how they had formed, what sort of mineral content they held, and Yaz wondered how she could possibly remember so many facts about one place. Yaz might have felt like she was on a school trip with anyone else, but somehow Jo made it fascinating. 

Together, they walked the main section of the park, then hiked back into some trails that felt a bit further from civilization where you could climb up onto some of the smaller rocks. “Oooh! Look! You can still see Pikes Peak from here!” Jo pointed out to her. 

It wasn’t until the sun disappeared behind one of the peaks, although it still felt like late afternoon, that they realized they should probably be getting back to the car so they didn’t get caught out in the dark. Yaz had no idea where they were, but Jo seemed perfectly comfortable and led the way back to the Beast. 

It wasn’t until they were back in the Beast that Yaz realized how well the distraction had worked. Despite her worry about Corey, she’d spent the past several hours in a state of complete bliss, so complete that she hadn’t even spared a thought for him and what he might be up to. 

“C’mon. Let’s grab some dinner before we head back to the hotel,” Jo suggested, pulling up some options on her phone and navigating them to the restaurant of choice. 

Yaz tried to engage in conversation, but now that she didn’t have the distraction of the beauty of nature, her mind kept running away with her every time she caught sight of her watch. How were things going with her colleagues? “I can’t stop thinking about it,” she finally admitted to Jo. “I know it’s pointless, and there’s nothing I can do from here, but… I just can’t stop worrying.” 

“It’s alright to worry, Yaz,” Jo told her. “It shows you care. It shows you’re human. Just so long as you also know that no matter how things turn out, right now you’re safe.” 

Yaz nodded, somewhat comforted, and she did her best to put her worries out of her mind. 

An hour later, full and satisfied, they trudged back up to the hotel room, changed into pajamas, and found a cheesy Christmas movie on TV. Jo popped a bag of popcorn from their stash and hopped onto the bed, while Yaz attempted to distract herself by reviewing the photos she’d taken earlier. 

Jo was nodding off on Yaz’s shoulder when Yaz’s phone rang at 9:34. Panic mixed with hope shot through Yaz, and she sat bolt upright, waking Jo up in the process. “It’s my coworker Margie,” she told Jo anxiously. 

“Well, answer it,” Jo told her, rubbing her eyes. 

Yaz did, and put it on speakerphone. “Hey Margie. What’s going on?” 

Margie sounded breathless and elated. “Guess what!” 

“Oh my god don’t make me guess. What happened?” 

“We caught him!” 

“No!” Yaz put her hands over her mouth, not quite believing what she was hearing, and Jo grinned at her. 

“Yeah! He took the bait hook, line, and sinker. Watched your friend’s apartment for about an hour before busting in a window and breaking in. And it gets better, Yaz- he _stole a car_ to get here, and when the Captain showed up to talk to him he told us _everything_. We’ve got him on breaking and entering, theft, destruction of property, attempted assault of a police officer, disorderly conduct… We’ve got enough to lock this asshole up until Christ returns.” Margie was laughing with exhilaration. 

“Are you serious?” Yaz exclaimed. “Please tell me you’re serious! Oh, my god, Jo, I’m sorry about your flat,” she realized suddenly. 

Jo was grinning. “Worth it.” 

“Don’t worry, we arrested him just as soon as he broke in. The only damage to your friend’s place is the window, and we’ve already arranged for it to be fixed.” Margie’s smile came through in her voice. 

“Thank you- ALL of you,” Yaz told her, looking at Jo as she spoke. “Tell everyone else at the precinct I said thank you, too,” Yaz told the phone. 

“Will do, girl. Hey I gotta go, but I just wanted to let you know so you can sleep easy tonight,” Margie told her. “Talk to ya later!” The phone disconnected and Yaz stared at the phone for a split second, barely believing it. 

It was like the entire world suddenly became a happy place again, and Yaz couldn’t stop laughing as she hugged Jo enthusiastically. “Oh my god, it’s over,” she said, “I can’t believe it’s over.” 

Jo hugged her back. “Totally worth it,” she said again with a grin. 

And for the first time in years, Yaz fell asleep without a worry in her mind. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my picture, but this is the Garden of the Gods! https://www.reddit.com/r/ColoradoSprings/comments/ech94l/i_will_never_get_tired_of_seeing_garden_of_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x


	4. December 23, 1:04 am

“Yaz! Yaz, wake up!” Jo’s panicked voice cut through Yaz’s sleep, along with a loud beeping that for some reason Yaz had assumed was a phone alarm. Jo grabbed Yaz’s shoulder and shook her. “Get up, we have to go!”

“Huh?” Yaz asked dumbly, forcing her eyes open in the dark.

She could hear quick footsteps thudding towards the door, then pulling it open and the light from the hallway spilled into the room, letting Yaz hear voices and rushing footsteps in the hallway too. “We have to go now, there’s a fire! Wake up!” Jo slapped the light switch on, tugging her coat on and looking around for her shoes.

“Fire?” Yaz asked, the words not quite making their way into her brain as she squinted against the light. “Are you sure? Is there smoke?”

“Yes,” Jo hissed, throwing Yaz’s coat at her, her expression one of pure terror. “Come on, we have to get out of here!”

Something about Jo’s expression finally got through to Yaz and a wave of adrenaline pushed her out of the bed. Yaz tugged on her coat and slipped on her shoes, remembering to slip her phone and the room key card into her pocket before letting Jo drag her from the room.

Stepping into the hallway, she could smell the pungent fragrance of smoke, very faintly, but definitely there. Jo was practically sprinting down the hallway to the stairwell, keeping a death grip on Yaz’s hand and nearly yanking her down the stairs and outside into a bona fide blizzard.

It took Yaz several long, freezing seconds to remember that there was another round of snow due to come through at some point, and in the whirlwind of emotions surrounding what had happened with Corey, Yaz had forgotten all about the weather. The icy wind pierced Yaz’s flimsy pajama bottoms, and for a moment she thought she might not mind a burning building if it was at least warm inside. Several other guests poured down the stairs and outside, although none of them ventured too far into the weather, stamping their feet and hiding their hands under their arms.

Jo maintained her death grip on Yaz’s hand, seemingly oblivious to the cold, watching the building nervously. When Yaz finally pulled her hand back so she could slide it into her warm pocket, Jo settled on wringing her hands nervously instead. 

“You okay?” Yaz asked, noticing the way all the blood had drained from her friend’s face.

Jo nodded wordlessly, looking very much not okay.

“Excuse me, everyone, we’re so sorry, but we’ve had a false alarm.” A hotel manager rounded the corner of the building and addressed the crowd gathered at the exit. “There’s no fire, it’s safe to go back in.”

That was all it took for the few people closest to the doors to head back inside. “What triggered the alarm?” an older man asked the manager as a surge of people moved around him to get back in the warmth.

“Someone set the microwave to twenty minutes while making popcorn and fell asleep,” the manager said, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice. 

Grumbles rumbled through the crowd and the rest of the people turned to go inside. Jo, however, seemed frozen to the spot.

“Jo?” Yaz asked. “C’mon, it’s freezing out here.” After a minute, Yaz took her hand out of her warm pocket and offered it to Jo. 

Slowly, Jo took her hand and let Yaz lead her back inside, hesitating for a second when the now easily recognizeable smell of burnt popcorn assaulted them in the stairwell. Yaz shuffled back to their room, with Jo in tow, and slid the key card into the lock.

The room let them in, and Yaz wrinkled her nose at the acrid smell of smoke that lingered in their room, albeit not as badly as the smell in the hall. “Ugh, now it’s going to smell in here,” she complained, kicking off her shoes and shrugging out of her coat.

Jo slowly, almost stiffly removed her shoes and put them by her side of the bed, seemingly unwilling to take off her coat or sit down. 

“Jo?” Yaz asked. “Are you alright?”

Jo wordlessly shook her head, and Yaz came around the side of the bed to see what was wrong. Her heart sank when she realized tears were pouring down Jo’s face. 

“Oh, hey, it’s alright. We’re safe,” Yaz raised a hand to Jo’s face and wiped away some of the tears with her thumb. 

“I know, it’s stupid,” Jo finally whispered, her voice thin. “I just… there was a fire, and…” she shifted her weight from one foot to the other anxiously. 

“Oh, Jo. I didn’t realize. I’m so sorry,” Yaz wrapped her in a hug and just held her for a moment, before realizing the smoky smell in the room was certainly not helping. “Tell you what, let’s just open the windows and air the place out a bit,” she said, pushing the curtains back and opening the door to the balcony as far as she could without letting the snow blow in directly towards the bed, then turning up the heater as high as it would go to make up for the icy wind that was rushing in.

The cold seemed to ground Jo, however, and Yaz could swear she actually saw the color coming back into Jo’s face as a few flurries blew into the room, carrying the smoky smell out. 

“C’mon, if we get under the covers it’ll be even warmer,” Yaz suggested, helping Jo out of her coat and tossing it over a chair. Yaz pulled the comforter back and slid under it, patting the mattress next to her to encourage Jo to join her. Jo finally slid under the covers and wrapped her arms around Yaz, burying her face in Yaz’s hoodie. Yaz let her arm come to rest around her new friend, noting how she was trembling, and gently running her fingers through soft blonde hair. “Do you want to talk about it?” Yaz asked after a moment.

Jo shook her head.

Yaz wished there was something more she could do to help, instead settling for gently playing with Jo’s hair and giving her the space to calm down. 

Jo spoke up after several long minutes, apparently having reconsidered Yaz's offer to talk things through. “River wasn’t just my friend,” Jo said quietly, voice muffled into Yaz’s hoodie. “She was my wife. And she… well, there was a fire.”

Yaz continued to play with her hair for a moment, trying to choose her words carefully and avoid making Jo feel pressured to talk. “What happened?”

She could feel Jo take a few deep breaths, but she wasn’t trembling anymore. “She died trying to save me,” she answered after a moment. “She was at work when it started. The idiot next door left a candle burning by the window when he went out and it caught the curtains on fire, then the fire got into the attic before anyone really noticed. The whole row of houses went up in pretty short order. I was upstairs, by myself, and I didn’t even know there was a fire until the ceiling caved in.” She sat up, pulling away from Yaz, and parted her hair to show an ugly pink scar on the side of her head, and when she let her hair fall back down over it Yaz would have never even known it was there. “River got home with the fire crew out front, the whole row of houses on fire,” she continued quietly. “The firemen said she was asking if anyone had seen me, and she must’ve slipped past them to come in after me. They said they found us on the ground floor, right inside the door, just before the whole structure collapsed. So in the end she managed to get me out, but she died. Smoke inhalation, they said.” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t even know until I woke up in the hospital. I never even got to say goodbye.”

Yaz couldn’t _imagine_ , and for a long few seconds she didn’t even know what to say. Instead, she pulled Jo into another hug, just holding her for several minutes until Jo started talking again.

“Sorry, Yaz, I just… the alarm, and the smoke…”

“Really, Jo, you shouldn’t be apologizing,” Yaz told her gently. “I understand. And I’m so, so sorry you had to go through all of that.” She pushed a stray lock of blonde hair behind Jo’s ear and out of her face. “Do you still smell the popcorn, or should we close the door?” she asked.

Jo considered for a minute, shivering from the cold coming in from the open door. “I don’t smell it anymore.”

Yaz nodded and got up to shut the door and turn the thermostat in the room back to something reasonable, her mind racing. She’d panicked several times after moving to America, most often in the middle of the night when something had made her wake up thinking about Corey breaking in. Usually, she turned on a movie or something to fall asleep to in hopes of taking her mind off her fears. Maybe that would help Jo take her mind off fires, she reasoned, and she switched on the TV as she turned out the lights and crawled back into the bed, intentionally moving closer to the center of the bed and leaving it open for Jo to snuggle in if she needed to.

Jo immediately took her up on it without a word, burrowing under the covers and wrapping her arms around Yaz’s waist, burying her face in Yaz’s hoodie again, and Yaz let her arm come to rest around her, playing with Jo’s hair until she was certain Jo was asleep.


	5. December 23, 8:22 am

8:22 am

Several thoughts occurred to Yaz all at the same time as she woke up.

First, she’d managed to remove her hoodie and chuck it across the room in her sleep, as she was now just in her sleep t-shirt and pajama bottoms. Secondly, the TV was off, so one of the two of them had turned it off overnight. And third, Jo was completely wrapped around her, and sound asleep.

Jo hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she was a sleep snuggler. Her face was nestled in Yaz’s neck, her soft breaths tickling Yaz’s skin, one of her arms wrapped around Yaz and holding her tightly- almost possessively, Yaz thought, although she didn’t mind one single bit. She was more comfortable than she’d been maybe ever.

The funny thing was, they just sort of fit together, Yaz noticed. Snuggling with Corey had been far too awkward, as he had been a good head taller than Yaz and muscular enough that she could never wrap an arm around him during the night without her arm being forced into an awkward upward angle that drained the blood out of her arm, and he’d been hot like a sweaty furnace all the time. And Tiffani had been exactly the opposite- petite and trim to the point of it being like spooning a sack of hammers when Yaz had tried to snuggle with her. Jo, though… she was slim but muscular, soft in a way that made Yaz just want to touch her, and she just felt… right, somehow. 

Yaz hated to move and possibly disturb Jo, so she nestled back down into the pillow and let herself drift off to sleep again.

9:42 am

The second time Yaz woke up, she was alone.

She sat up and looked around, spotting Jo wrapped in the blanket on the balcony, looking out at the mountains that were somehow even whiter than they’d been yesterday morning.

Yaz rolled out of bed and retrieved her hoodie before stepping out onto the balcony with Jo. “Morning,” she mumbled.

Jo glanced up at her and gave her a polite smile- too polite, Yaz thought. “Good morning,” Jo replied.

Yaz hesitated, a sudden moment of awkwardness overtaking her. “So, er… I hope you haven’t been out here too long,” she said, trying to gauge how long Jo had been up.

Jo shook her head. “No, not that long. Just enjoying the view,” she said, gesturing to the grand sprawl of mountains in front of them. 

Maybe Yaz just didn’t know Jo all that well, she wondered, even though it felt like they were old friends, they’d really only known each other a few days. Yaz wasn’t sure if Jo was just quieter than usual after the events of last night, or if something was bothering her, and Yaz didn’t know how to approach it. She paused, weighing her options. “Did you get any coffee yet?” she asked at last, mentally kicking herself for bringing up something so mundane.

Jo shook her head again. “No, not yet.”

Yaz paused. “Well, I’m going to get in out of the cold and make a cup. Do you want one?”

“That would be nice, thank you.” Jo smiled, but it was a formal kind of smile, the kind you give someone you just don’t know very well. She stood up and wrapped the blanket even tighter around her shoulders and followed Yaz back inside the room.

“Everything ok?” Yaz asked at last as she started one of the coffees.

Jo nodded, still acting far more formal than Yaz was used to. “Yaz, I just wanted to apologize about last night,” Jo started, confusing Yaz even further. “I got carried away.”

“Huh?” Yaz asked.

“I just, I didn’t want to make things awkward,” Jo said uncomfortably. “And I hope I didn’t. I wasn’t trying to, you know, come on to you or anything, so if I gave you that impression… I mean, I really appreciate you being there for me last night but I know you’re straight, so…”

What she was getting at finally clicked in Yaz’s mind. “Whoa, wait, hold up a sec. You think I’m straight?” Yaz clarified.

It was Jo’s turn to be confused. “But… your ex-boyfriend…” she started.

“Jo,” Yaz said with a little grin, “I’ve never been more offended in my life,” she told her, making sure to keep her tone light and convey that it was only mock offense. “Yeah, Corey was the last person I dated, but I’ve dated women before him. So if you’re worried I’m going to judge you or something, you can go right ahead and stop worrying about that.”

“Really?” Jo visibly relaxed, as though she couldn’t quite believe her luck. “I mean, you never know, some people get really weird when they find out. And there I was just making myself comfortable, not everyone likes a cuddle in the first place.”

“Oh, you can cuddle me anytime,” Yaz told her with a grin, unsure where this newfound boldness was coming from. 

Jo laughed, and with that, they were back to normal. Yaz handed her a cup of coffee and started one for herself. “Seriously, though,” Yaz asked as it dripped into the cup, “did you sleep alright after we got woken up?”

Jo blew on her coffee carefully and sat on the edge of the bed. “Mostly,” she told her. “Having the TV on helped, definitely.”

Yaz nodded. “It tends to help me sleep when my mind won’t shut off,” she told Jo.

Just then, Yaz’s phone went off, and she groaned. “It’s Mum,” she said, reading the caller ID off Facetime. “She’s going to hate that I’m still in my pajamas,” she grumbled as she pulled her computer out of her bag to take the call on a screen she wouldn’t have to hold up during the call. She answered it just in time. “Hi Mum!” she said as the call connected, keeping her tone lighter than she felt. 

“Hey, Yaz!” Najia’s face filled the screen with a giant smile. “Hope it’s not too early there! I meant to call yesterday but the day got away from me.”

“No, it’s fine,” Yaz grinned too, the old homesickness rushing back now that she had her mum on the screen. “I’m so sorry it’s been such trouble trying to get home. And sorry I haven’t been keeping you updated very well,” she laughed as she remembered it had been a day or so since she’d texted about the travel situation.

Najia waved her off. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather, I know you’re sort of at the mercy of the airlines. Are you at least ok where you are, for now?”

Yaz nodded. “Yeah, it’s actually turned out really well. Made a new friend, did some easy hiking yesterday,” she said, turning the computer so her mum could see Jo on the screen, pouring sugar packets into her coffee.

Jo realized she was on camera and smiled brightly, bringing Yaz’s coffee over and sitting on the bed next to Yaz in front of the computer. “Hi, Yaz’s mum!”

“This is Jo,” Yaz told Najia, and they waved at each other through the screen.

Sonya popped up in the background, holding the baby. “Hey, nerd,” she greeted Yaz. 

“Hey, jerkface. Oh my gosh is that Sai??” Yaz pulled the computer closer, as though that would bring them closer together.

“Yup!” Sonya grinned proudly, and she and Najia traded places so she could hold the baby closer to the camera.

Yaz squealed and patted Jo’s arm. “Aaaah! I have a nephew!!” she exclaimed, and Jo laughed too. “He is SO cute. When I make it back to Sheffield, I’m going to snuggle him and never let him go.”

“Good, you can keep him. Especially at 2 am when he’s up for no reason.” Sonya rolled her eyes, but she was obviously joking, completely in love with the baby too.

“Oh, that’s okay, I’m often up at 2 am for no reason, too,” Yaz joked. “Aww, I’m so sad that I’m not there with you guys. Oh, but wait! I didn’t tell you yet!” she exclaimed, and proceeded to fill them in on the trap they’d set for Corey and how he was unlikely to be bothering her for a long time.

“That’s great, Yaz!” Najia told her when she’d relayed the full story. “So are we going to get you back here permanently, then? Now that you don’t have a stalker anymore?”

Yaz had to physically resist the urge to look at Jo and gauge her response. “Um, well, I dunno. Not immediately, anyway, I do have a job to get back to in California. But it is awfully far away from you guys. I guess I hadn’t considered that could be an option,” she mused.

The baby started crying and they ended their call, but Yaz couldn’t stop thinking about Najia’s suggestion. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d been looking forward to hanging out with Jo again once the holidays were over. And the thought had definitely crossed her mind that Ryan had been right- Jo was definitely her type, and, alright, she had to admit it to herself, she was _very_ interested, and especially after what she’d learned last night, she wondered if Jo could be interested, too. But was that a good enough reason to stay half a world away from her family long term?

Well, it wasn’t something she had to decide right now. Right now, there were mountains to climb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaaaahhhh Ok so I'm definitely not going to get this all done by Christmas... obviously. But I am planning to have it wrapped up by New Year's, and then I'll pay more attention to the other fic I'm in the middle of! :D


	6. December 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Better late than never, eh??

Yaz’s muscles ached from yesterday’s hike as she pushed herself forward, following Jo up the trail through knee-deep snow. The hikes they’d picked yesterday and today were far more challenging than their first hike through Garden of the Gods, and Yaz found herself in need of a mental distraction before she passed out from the exercise and the altitude.

“What’s the funniest thing that’s happened in your classes?” Yaz asked.

“The funniest thing?” Jo repeated, thinking, not sounding nearly as winded as Yaz felt. “Hmmm. Well, it’s always pretty funny when people sign up for an astrophysics or astronomy class and think it’s astrology. I have to resist the urge to make up personalities for planets and just see how they react when I know I’ve got one.” They trudged up a few more steps and Jo suddenly laughed. “Oh! I’ve got a good one. This was about a year ago. I was at Stanford, a couple of my students carried this poor girl halfway across campus when she fell down some stairs and broke her leg, they brought her straight into my office. And of course I have no idea what to do with a broken leg, so I asked them why they didn’t take her to the hospital instead of going to all the trouble to bring her to me. And they were all confused because they saw “doctor” in front of my name and it didn’t occur to them that you get that title by having a doctorate degree, not necessarily going to medical school. They were stunned when I told them my doctorate in astrophysics wasn’t going to help her broken leg much.” 

Yaz laughed. “Seriously?”

Jo laughed too and stopped walking, needing a minute to catch her breath. “I ended up driving them to the hospital because I didn’t want them carrying her all the way back across campus. Poor girl.”

Yaz paused, too, catching her breath as they paused on the side of the trail, only partially distracted by Jo’s story. They were surrounded by a grove of trees, the trail was steep, and Yaz leaned over to put her hands on her knees as she caught her breath.

“You okay?” Jo asked.

Yaz nodded. “Yup. Just need a minute before we move on.”

Jo seemed to catch her breath much quicker than Yaz was, and she looked around at the side of the mountain they were on. “We’ve got to be getting close,” she encouraged Yaz.

Yaz took a few more steps up the mountain. “Well, let’s hurry up and get to the top then,” she said.

“So, since we’re exchanging funny work stories, you must have some good ones from the police force,” Jo asked as she followed Yaz.

Yaz started to laugh. “Oh, so many.” She trudged onwards, trying to think of the best ones to tell. “Ok, here’s one from a few weeks ago. I should tell you that I _hate_ traffic duty. It just brings out the worst in people, from sorting out parking disputes to pulling over people for speeding. They all think they’re justified in what they’re doing somehow, and I get flirted with an _insane_ amount of the time as people try to get out of tickets. And it’s not even the flattering kind of flirting, either, where you know it’s because you look good, it’s the kind where they’re doing it only to serve their own end. So anyway, I pull over this guy for speeding. Like 30 miles over, right? Older guy. Has a vanity plate on his car. And I think he’s probably going to try to flirt with me, but he surprised me and tried to convince me he’s a cop, too, and he was about to pull over someone else up ahead for speeding, and he was just trying to catch up to him.” 

Jo started laughing. “What did you do?”

“Arrested him for impersonating a police officer.”

“Seriously?”

Yaz nodded. “Well, at first, I gave him an out. I told him I knew everyone in my precinct, and he told me he was from a neighboring one. So I told him that undercover cop cars don’t have vanity plates, and he said it was a new thing they were trying out. So I asked him to radio his captain so I could verify employment and he actually called a friend of his who had absolutely no idea what was going on and wasn’t playing along at all. But this guy stuck to his story like glue.” Yaz shook her head.

“People are amazing, aren’t they?” Jo asked. 

Yaz laughed. “You know, it’s funny. You and I get to see the opposite ends of the spectrum of human stupidity. You get to see people who don’t know what they don’t know, and you get to educate them, and I get to see people who think they know everything and that they can do what they want.”

Jo smiled. “I love people, though. The creativity, the way they will constantly surprise you, the brilliant things they do as they go on about their lives. I always feel so honored to be a part of it with my students.”

Yaz watched her, feeling the wonder and excitement she seemed to exude when it came to other people. All of Yaz’s experience had been different- seeing the worst of people, rather than the best, and Jo’s love for people seeped into Yaz’s consciousness as the way she should be. Yaz wanted to see people that way, Jo made her want to be _better_ , and she smiled. “Jo, that’s beautiful.”

Jo smiled and suddenly sprinted up a steep section of trail. “I think we’ve made it, Yaz!” she exclaimed, disappearing behind a boulder.

Yaz took a deep breath and sprinted up the hill, too, nearly exhausted, but found that all the physical exhaustion of the past several hours was wiped away by the view in front of them, and she stepped forward to stand next to Jo, shielded from the wind by the boulder. “Wow,” was all she could say. 

Looking to their right, the direction they’d come from, a ridge of mountains loomed, sparkling white with snow. In front of them the mountains tapered off into a valley, where a bright blue body of water meandered through the hills, the sun reflecting off the patches of the water that hadn’t completely frozen over. Jo climbed up on top of the boulder, and Yaz followed, and the two of them stood there in the icy wind for a few moments, just taking in the 360 degree view of the snowy mountains as far as the eye could see in any direction. 

They huddled close together for warmth, enjoying the accomplishment of having summited the mountain for as long as they could physically stand the cold. 

“Are you ready to go back down?” Jo asked as Yaz pressed even closer, shivering.

Yaz nodded. “I feel like a human popsicle.”

“Onward, then,” Jo told her with a grin, and they hopped down off the boulder and started the cold, slippery trek back down the mountain.

The trail felt so much steeper going back down, now that gravity was working with them. They were much quieter on the way back, paying more attention to their footing and trying to balance on the icy path as opposed to keeping each other amused.

They were not very far from the parking area when Yaz’s foot slipped and she slid several feet off the trail. “Yaz!” Jo yelled, carefully picking her way over to Yaz and helping her up. “Are you okay?”

Yaz nodded, unable to feel any pain anywhere. “I’m fine, really. Just really cold and wasn’t watching where I put my feet.” She wrapped an arm around Jo anyway, glad to have an excuse to be near her.

“Are you hurt?” Jo asked, worried.

Yaz shook her head. “Nope.” They took a few steps and she winced. “Well, I might have twisted my ankle, but it’s fine.”

“We can stop for a few minutes,” Jo suggested.

“No,” Yaz shook her head again. “It’s too cold to stop. Let’s just get back to the car.” She found she was still able to put weight on her foot, even though it wasn’t pleasant.

“Am I going to have to give you a piggyback ride back down?” Jo teased.

Yaz laughed. “How about I take you up on that another time?”

They finally reached the Beast, and Jo offered to drive them back to the hotel while Yaz pulled her hiking boot off and made sure her ankle was okay. “Should be fine,” Yaz confirmed, blasting the car’s heater on her feet and turning the car’s heated seats on high. By the time they made it back to civilization, Yaz was certain after a good night’s sleep her foot would be as good as new. They made a quick detour to pick up a couple bottles of wine, at Jo’s suggestion that a nice glass of wine after a long hike was one of life’s finer pleasures that Yaz shouldn’t miss out on. They even managed to find the same kind they’d had at the restaurant the other night, and when they finally settled in on the bed at the hotel room, Yaz had to admit that she agreed.

Jo handed her a glass of wine- well, glass was probably the wrong word, as it was one of the plastic water cups the hotel provided. “Not the classiest way to have a drink, I suppose, but it’ll do.”

“At least we’re not drinking it straight from the bottle,” Yaz laughed as Jo turned on the TV and joined her on the bed, promptly snuggling in. It was the perfect end to the day, Yaz thought, snug and warm, with the wine and the exertion from the hike stealing her consciousness, Jo warm and soft under her hands. Just before she drifted off to sleep, Yaz thought she felt Jo press a light kiss into her hairline, and Yaz fell asleep with a soft smile on her lips.


	7. December 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys. I'm actually embarrassed at how long it's taking me to write things and get them posted. Omg. How the _hell_ do professional writers get anything done on time?? I'm seriously feeling a lot of sympathy for George RR Martin right now. But on the other hand... better late than never, eh? And I still have like at least three chapters of this one left.
> 
> And on that note.... time for the reason for the rating. :) :) :)
> 
> Also, because I love to show off my photography, too, here's some pictures I took on this same hike.
>
>> [Mt Cutler](//imgur.com/a/bMhZgkh)

The smell of coffee woke Yaz up on Christmas morning, and if it was possible, Jo was even more upbeat than ever. “Morning, Yaz!” she chirped as Yaz sat up. “Merry Christmas!”

Yaz thought about it for a moment, deciding that it was, indeed, Christmas. “Merry Christmas,” she replied with a sleepy smile.

Jo jumped into a sitting position on the bed next to Yaz with her coffee, rather than step out onto the balcony. “How are you feeling? Is your ankle ok? Do you still want to do that hike we were talking about yesterday?”

Yaz rolled her ankle a couple times, assessing how it felt. “Seems fine to me. You said this hike was a bit shorter, right?”

“Yup!” Jo pulled out her phone and curled up next to Yaz as she showed her the map to Mt. Cutler. “Just about two miles, start to finish.”

“Mmmm.” Yaz smiled and wrapped an arm around Jo, if she was going to voluntarily be that close. “Let’s do it,” she decided, but rather than making a move to get up she snuggled in even further.

Jo laughed and ran her fingers through Yaz’s hair. “Is it customary for you to stay in bed all day on Christmas?”

Yaz really wished there was an implication behind the words. “It could be,” she said, her tone much more suggestive than she initially intended.

Jo laughed again. “We can’t climb a mountain if we stay in bed all day.”

“Mmm. True,” Yaz mumbled.

Jo let them stay cuddled up together for a few more moments until she wriggled out of bed to go put more sugar in her coffee, and Yaz took the opportunity to drag herself out of the sheets and put on a coffee for herself. 

An hour and a half later, they were once again following a trail of footprints up the side of a mountain, exchanging stories of their favorite Christmases they’d had. Jo told Yaz about the Christmas she’d had when she was seven, and her parents had gotten her a new red bike- and she’d ended up in the emergency room by the end of the day.

“It’s always funny,” Yaz told her, “when you’re a kid, the Christmas season just feels like the natural order of things. Like it’s inevitable. And then you grow up and it feels like the season is shorter, it’s not as exciting anymore.”

“Yeah, I think that’s just growing up, though,” Jo told her. “Everything is what you make of it, rather than what people make of it for you. But that’s sort of a good thing.”

“Hmmm.” Yaz thought about it for a minute. “You’re right,” she said at last. “You know, though, I kind of can’t wait for next year, when Sai is old enough to appreciate it. Sonya won’t do Christmas, exactly, like we never really did Christmas when we were kids, but the season is always pretty and exciting. I hope I get to go home throughout the year, too. I’m going to be really upset if I don’t see my nephew again until he’s almost one.”

“He is pretty adorable,” Jo agreed.

“I can’t wait to get home and see everyone. Even my brother-in-law Jagan. You know, it’s funny,” Yaz told her as they walked. “I didn’t much like him at first, but he’s grown on me.”

“Why not?”

Yaz shrugged. “Well, he always struck me as really conceited. And Sonya and him had barely been dating six months when he proposed to her, on Christmas day, as her Christmas gift. Sonya was thrilled but I thought it was pretty tasteless of him. Like, hey, you know what your Christmas present is? Me. For the rest of your life. You’re welcome.”

Jo bent over laughing. “You’re not big on cheesy romantic gestures, are you?”

Yaz made a face. “Oh, _god_ no. Like those Hallmark Christmas movies they make? My friend Ryan used to watch them with his nan all the time and I just can’t _stand_ them. They’re so predictable! Everyone always proposes on Christmas or New Year’s Eve at midnight or something. You wanna surprise your girlfriend, doing it on a statistically significant day isn’t much of a surprise, is it?”

Jo was now cracking up. “So if someone wanted to propose to you, they’d have to do it at like, 3 am on a Tuesday morning in March, then?”

“Yes, exactly.” Yaz grinned, but she was joking. “Catch me off guard, that’s the way to my heart.” Jo’s laughter was contagious, and she started giggling too. “Why, are you saying you like the cheesy predictable Hallmark style romance?”

“I gotta admit, I don’t mind a bit of cheese,” Jo told her with a laugh. “I think those movies are over the top, but there’s something to be said for picking an already special day and making it even more special.”

“Ooooh, cheesy. So let me guess,” Yaz teased her. “You’d love strolling through a garden in the spring hand in hand with someone.”

“Yup.”

“And Valentine’s day.”

“You got me.”

“And if you had to pick a place specifically for a romantic getaway, you’d pick Paris so you could kiss under the Eiffel Tower or something.”

“Guilty.”

“And you love snuggling up by a fire under the mistletoe at Christmas.”

“Well, that’s not much of a guess, you already know I’m a snuggler,” Jo laughed.

“Yeah, but mistletoe, c’mon. That’s right up your alley.”

“It’s literally a plant that gives you an excuse to kiss! What’s not to love?”

Yaz cracked up. “I do hear mistletoe is often full of nargles.”

Jo cracked a giant, bright grin. “Oh, I love Harry Potter,” she told Yaz. “Cried like a baby at the seventh book.”

“Right??” 

They chatted about Harry Potter and all their favorite moments, Jo refusing to accept that Yaz was anything other than a Slytherin, Yaz insisting that Jo had to be a Hufflepuff as opposed to a Ravenclaw. It wasn’t long until they had followed the footprints in the snow up the trail, across a small clearing to an outcropping with a bench that offered them an absolutely stunning view of a nearby ridge of peaks. The clouds that had been present in the early morning were giving way to a brilliant blue sky that contrasted with the brown ridges of the mountains and the sharp white of the snow.

“I will never get tired of this,” Yaz proclaimed, sitting down on the bench that overlooked the ridge. 

“Mmm. I know the feeling,” Jo agreed, sitting next to Yaz, close enough for Yaz to wrap her arms around her for warmth.

“I can’t wait to get back home, but it’s going to suck leaving,” Yaz told her, resting her head on Jo’s shoulder. “I’ve really enjoyed these days with you. And the mountains. And hiking.”

“Well, you know, just because we have to leave Colorado doesn’t mean we have to stop hiking,” Jo suggested, watching Yaz carefully to gauge her reaction. 

Yaz sat up a little straighter. “Yeah?”

Jo smiled. “Travelling’s always better with two.”

Yaz broke into a wide grin. “That would be brilliant, actually,” she agreed, looking back out at the view and something overhead just catching her attention. Yaz turned to look at it properly. “Wait a minute,” she said, pausing as she caught sight of a bouquet of mistletoe, wrapped in glittery red ribbon, tied to the tree branch over the bench. “Did you do that?” she asked Jo, pointing upward.

“What?” Jo asked, looking genuinely clueless.

Yaz pointed.

Jo looked upward and laughed. “Wasn’t me,” she told Yaz truthfully. “When would I have even had the chance to put it there without you noticing?” she asked.

Yaz nodded. “True.” She turned back to Jo, glancing briefly at her lips, wondering if she was just misreading the signals. “You know what you said earlier about mistletoe?” she asked, hesitating.

“Yeah?” Jo asked, and Yaz could swear she was leaning in just a tiny bit closer.

Yaz decided it was now or never, and pulling Jo closer, pressed their lips together in a kiss.

Jo responded exactly as Yaz had hoped, leaning in and kissing back, and _god_ she was soft and warm and absolutely melting under Yaz’s touch. Yaz moved even closer, as close as she could get in the cold with several layers of clothing each in between them, her tongue darting out and exploring Jo’s mouth as Jo pressed even closer, fingers slipping under Yaz’s coat and seeking out bare skin.

Yaz groaned into Jo’s mouth at the feel of her fingers on Yaz’s stomach and Jo’s teeth gently nipping at Yaz’s lower lip. “We’ve been sharing a perfectly good bed for almost a week and we pick the top of a mountain to start this?” Yaz asked huskily after a minute.

“We didn’t have mistletoe over the bed,” Jo reminded her with a grin, gently kissing down Yaz’s jawline.

“What, you need a plant to tell you what to do?” Yaz teased her, leaning into the touch, allowing her hands to seek out Jo’s warm skin under her shirt and resolutely ignoring the growing heat between her legs.

“Oh, you should always listen to the plants,” Jo told her, and Yaz could feel her smiling against her neck.

Yaz laughed and let her hands wander, finding the bottom of Jo’s bra, and Jo gasped as the cold air seeped under her clothes. “Maybe we should take this back to the hotel,” Yaz suggested.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Jo whispered into Yaz’s mouth.

Yaz took her hand and stood up, pulling the mistletoe bouquet off the tree and carefully sticking it in her pocket. “Just in case we need an excuse later,” she explained to Jo.

Jo laughed and grabbed Yaz’s hand. “I highly doubt we’ll need one, but good thinking.”

The journey back down the trail seemed much shorter than the trek up, and Yaz couldn’t decide if it was because gravity was working with them or because the two of them were suddenly very giggly and in high spirits. They reached the Beast and Yaz drove them back to the hotel, forcing herself to pay at least some attention to speed limits and traffic safety. She was absolutely _dying_ to touch Jo by the time they got back to the hotel, and if she had worried on the way back that the mood had been lost in all the time it took them to get from the overlook to the hotel, one glance from Jo told her she had absolutely nothing to worry about.

The door had barely closed behind them when Yaz had pressed Jo up against the wall, kissing her fiercely, Jo melting under her touch. Jo’s hands sought out Yaz’s warm skin, first unzipping and relieving Yaz of her coat, then removing the hoodie and shirts underneath. Yaz’s bra quickly followed, and she moaned happily as Jo’s hands ghosted over bare breasts. 

Yaz similarly pushed Jo’s coat off her shoulders, letting her fingers find Jo’s ribs and lifting her shirts over her head. Yaz nipped at Jo’s lower lip, spurred on by the gentle noises Jo made as Yaz explored Jo’s neck with her tongue and teeth and the feel of Jo’s fingers gently tugging at her hair.

Jeans went next, Yaz’s fingers dragging Jo’s jeans and woolen under layer to the ground, leaving Jo spread against the wall in nothing but underwear and a sports bra, and Yaz wasn’t sure she’d ever seen anything hotter. Her fingers pushed underneath the elastic waistband of her underwear and sought out the wet heat beneath. Jo sighed audibly when Yaz finally reached it, after so very long, exploring the shapes and folds beneath her fingers, and it was all Yaz could do not to press her fingers inwards right then and there, where they surely belonged.

In fact, Yaz was so wrapped up in what she was doing, she barely noticed Jo’s fingers deftly undoing her own jeans and snagging her underwear, and Jo managed to drag the fabric down her legs, leaving Yaz far more naked than Jo currently was- which, she thought, was rather unfair. Yaz sought to rectify the situation, unclipping Jo’s bra and lifting it over her head.

Jo responded by shimmying out of her own underwear and slowly walking them over to the bed, pushing Yaz backwards gently until Yaz was laid out naked on the sheets, Jo’s weight gently pressing Yaz back into the mattress. “Are you sure about this?” Jo asked, her low voice resonating in Yaz’s ear as her fingers gently traced circles on the sensitive skin of Yaz’s inner thighs, so very close to where Yaz really wanted them.

“Please,” Yaz whispered desperately.

Yaz could feel Jo smile against her neck before her voice sounded in Yaz’s ear again. “Spread your legs for me,” Jo told her in a low voice.

Heat shot through Yaz as she obeyed, and Jo kissed her way down Yaz’s body until her mouth was inches away from where Yaz wanted her. Torturously slowly, Jo positioned herself so she was laying in between Yaz’s legs, Yaz’s knees bent over Jo’s shoulders as Jo’s hot breath teased her, letting Yaz know she was _almost_ where Yaz needed her desperately.

Jo snaked her arms underneath Yaz’s legs, letting her hands come to rest on Yaz’s hip bones and pulling Yaz’ body towards her mouth, finally, _finally_ letting her tongue lick up the length of Yaz, and Yaz cried out as the pleasure shot through her body. Yaz had known she had wanted Jo like this since she’d laid eyes on her, but she hadn’t quite realized just how desperately she needed this, and her hands curled into Jo’s hair, soft blonde locks sticking up through her fingers as she held Jo’s head in place, and Jo gently sucked at Yaz’s clit, drawing high pitched cries from Yaz’s throat like a conductor from an orchestra.

Yaz’s hands tightened in Jo’s hair, and she felt fingers at her entrance, parting her gently, dancing lightly so as not to offend as Jo’s mouth continued to suck gently at her clit, tongue teasing her until she wanted to cry. “Please,” she heard herself begging, and slim fingers slipped inside as easily as you please, filling her so perfectly Yaz could only cry out in response- more a song than a cry, she realized as she heard herself. Jo was making her sing.

And sing she did, until she could sing no more, and the stars in her head subsided and her body relaxed, and Jo gently kissed upwards until she reached Yaz’s mouth. Through her haze of happiness, she felt Jo take one of her hands and guide it to where Jo wanted it most. Yaz felt Jo’s warm heat on her fingers, and she gently circled Jo’s entrance with light, teasing strokes. Jo’s hips chased the sensations underneath her. “You’re killing me, Yaz,” Jo groaned, shifting to fully straddle Yaz, giving her more room to maneuver her hand.

“Oooh.” Yaz grinned. “You want more?” she asked, allowing a finger to gently catch Jo’s clit.

Jo groaned, and Yaz could almost _see_ the wave of pleasure she’d caused roll through Jo’s body. “I want you inside, right now,” she panted.

Well, when she put it that way, who was Yaz to make her wait?

Yaz pressed her fingers inwards until they were buried inside Jo, gently rocking with Jo’s movements over Yaz as Jo’s mouth fell open- and she had been wrong earlier, _this_ was possibly the hottest thing Yaz had ever seen- and Yaz curled her fingers inside Jo, reveling in the sound it drew from her. 

Wanting more leverage, Yaz gently withdrew her fingers to Jo’s protest and wrapped an arm around her waist, switching their positions. She laid Jo down gently on the bed, Jo’s legs instinctively falling open and Yaz made up for the brief interruption by easing a third finger into Jo when she returned her hand to it’s previous position. Yaz leaned over her body and let her other hand come up to Jo’s breast, gently pinching a nipple with one hand and stroking inside with the other until Jo fell apart beautifully beneath her. 

At last, they curled into each other, their passionate kisses burned out into long, slow, lazy ones instead. “We should have done that days ago,” Jo finally mumbled into Yaz’s hair.

Yaz grinned. “Definitely,” she agreed. Without warning, her stomach rumbled loudly before she could say anything else, sending them into giggles.

“You seem hungry,” Jo remarked. “What do you say to dinner?”

“You know, usually people buy me dinner _before_ we go to bed, not after,” Yaz joked. 

Jo laughed. “We can do that again after dinner, too,” she said. “If you want to maintain the status quo.”

Yaz leaned in for one more kiss before getting up. “You’re on.”


	8. December 26-27

Yaz was surprised to be the first to wake up the following morning, and she relished the absolute quiet of the hotel room, the cozy warmth under the covers with Jo pressed into her side, her slow, deep breaths tickling the skin on Yaz’s neck. As gently as she could manage, Yaz shifted so she could turn to face Jo and run her fingers through her hair.

She could get used to this, she decided. Falling asleep curled up against Jo after a long evening of wine and deep kisses and slow sex, waking up to Jo wrapped around her and feeling like everything was right in the world. It was like waking up in a dream of everything she’d ever hoped for her future to be.

Not for the first time, she wondered if it could last, maybe, when they inevitably had to leave.

Eventually, Jo curled into a little ball up against Yaz as she woke up. “I was having the stupidest dream about you,” she mumbled into Yaz’s shirt.

Yaz smiled. “Yeah? What did I do?”

“You talked me into moving to Iceland and opening a shelter for kangaroos. Like a dog shelter, but for all the stray kangaroos that are sad and homeless on the Icelandic tundra.” Jo started giggling. “So we packed up all of our belongings and moved into an igloo that was actually a bowling alley once you got inside.”

Yaz cracked up. “That’s the dream, I suppose, to live in a bowling alley rescuing homeless kangaroos.”

Jo stretched and sat up, reaching for her phone when it chimed. “Oh, the airline’s sent an email.”

Yaz groaned. “I suppose we should eventually consider checking if flights are running yet.” She pulled out her phone and brought up the weather app. “Looks like New York is still getting snowed on right now, if this is right,” she mused.

Jo reached for her laptop and sprawled back out across the bed, pulling up the website and making a face. “Yeah, but they start running flights back home this evening. Probably once the weather moves out.” She clicked through a few options. “They don’t waste any time, do they?”

“I guess not.” Yaz pulled up the airline website too, trying to ignore the pinch of disappointment in her stomach. “If we have to leave, let’s at least see if we can get seats next to each other.”

They clicked through the options and somehow managed to find two seats next to each other on both flights, and transferred their reservations from their initial flights to tomorrow. Once both confirmation numbers had been emailed to them, they tossed their electronics aside. “So,” Yaz said, forcing a smile and trying to squish down the little asshole in her head that was suddenly taunting her that this was their last day together. “What shall we do today?”

“Mmmmm.” Jo stretched out on the bed again, wrapping her arms around Yaz and pressing light kisses into the skin of Yaz’s neck. “I can think of a few things we could do.”

“Such as…?” Yaz pressed with a grin.

Jo suddenly sat straight up. “Oh! We haven’t even been downtown!”

Yaz laughed. “That was not where I thought you were going with that.”

“Well we can do that too, but we should at least see the town, don’t you think? We’ve been all over the mountains already.” 

Yaz smiled. “Alright, then, downtown it is.”

It took them much longer than Yaz anticipated to get dressed and ready to go downtown, given their newfound difficulty in keeping their hands off each other. When they finally did make it, and found an acceptable spot in which to park the Beast, they were ravenously hungry.

After a very large pasta lunch, they wandered the downtown area hand in hand, stopping in shops and grabbing coffees in the mid afternoon. They sat on a bench in a little park and watched people go by, making up ridiculous names and backstories for the passers-by about what they might be doing out on the day after Christmas, and laughing themselves silly. A chocolate shop drew them in, and they sampled gourmet candies and each bought a bag of bite-sized chocolate Pikes Peak’s to take on the airplane with them the next day. 

When the sun went down and it became too cold to comfortably walk around outside for any length of time, they grabbed some takeout to bring back to their hotel room and tucked their belongings into their luggage in preparation for their flights the following day. They settled in for a quiet evening with a movie on tv. Yaz set the alarm on her phone for an ungodly hour before they snuggled in under the covers. 

And perhaps they stayed up a bit too late, again, because when Yaz’s alarm went off at 3 am, she felt like she’d barely been asleep for any time at all. 

“Whassthat?” Jo muttered into Yaz’s bare chest when the ringtone had been going off for a minute and a half.

Yaz groaned and reached for her phone. “The alarm,” she grumbled, hitting the snooze button and snuggling back in.

“Mmmm.” Jo wrapped her arm around Yaz, sounding completely unbothered.

Tragically, the alarm went off again six minutes later, and Jo sat up and turned on the light, rubbing her eyes. “Why’d we pick such an early flight again?” she grumbled aloud.

Yaz groaned again and buried her face in her pillow. “We could just stay here forever.”

“Better than going back home,” Jo muttered under her breath. She looked grumpily around the room before getting up and locating her clothes.

After a minute Yaz got up, too, getting dressed and stuffing her remaining belongings back in her luggage. It felt weird, after a whole week, to be putting her stuff in a suitcase when she felt like this was where she belonged, but their time was up. She zipped up her luggage with a solid weight pulling on her heart. She really didn’t want to leave.

Jo was quieter than usual, too, which Yaz didn’t know whether to attribute to the end of their time together or the fact that it was an hour that no normal human being should be awake. They gathered their things in near silence, took one last look around the room, and trudged down to the desk to turn in their keys and toss their luggage in the backseat of the Beast. It was freezing cold, but most of the snow had melted away, leaving just a pitch black, frigid night as Yaz started up the pickup truck and turned up the heat and the seat warmers as far as they would go.

Jo turned on the radio and browsed through it until she found a song they both liked, and despite her promise to stay awake on the drive to the airport, Yaz caught her dozing off a time or two on the hour and a half drive into Denver. She couldn’t even be mad, though, Jo looked so peaceful and god knew it was far too early for either of them to be awake.

They returned the rental car, made it through security, and were at the gate waiting on their flight before the sun even managed to break over the horizon. Yaz blearily sipped the coffee they’d stopped for at the Starbucks in the terminal and watched the colors paint the sky outside the window. She caught Jo watching the sky, too, oranges and pinks reflecting in her eyes, and it occurred to Yaz that she looked shattered.

“You okay?” Yaz asked after a minute.

“Mmm.” Jo took a sip of her coffee, as though she was stalling. “Yeah. I just really wasn’t looking forward to going back home.”

“Well, Christmas is over, now,” Yaz pointed out. “I’m sure nobody would mind if you just headed back to California instead.”

“Oh, they would mind,” Jo said with a little snort, and took another sip of her coffee. “I’ve been putting this off too long now.”

Yaz opened her mouth to ask what exactly she was going back for, but was cut off by a boarding announcement that had them scrambling to finish their coffees and drag their bags to their seats on the plane. By the time they were seated, Yaz had completely chickened out of bringing up her questions again, and instead she pulled out a book. She had a sudden moment of déjà vu, back to the flight that had stranded them in the first place- Yaz in the window seat with a book, Jo right next to her untangling her earbuds. 

A deep sadness settled in Yaz’s chest as she watched Jo pull up an audiobook on her phone once her earbuds were in order. It was different than the feeling that a vacation was coming to an end, it was more… she’d found something she didn’t want to lose. The problem was, she didn’t quite know how to bring it up.

Jo leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes as she turned on her book, and Yaz curled up in her seat with her head on Jo’s shoulder once they were in the air, reading the book she’d picked and giggling every so often at a funny passage. And it never failed, every time she laughed at something, Jo would open her eyes to see what was so funny, and grin at whatever page Yaz was on.

Yaz even managed a nap, when the coffee wore off and the early morning started to take its toll, and she nodded off on Jo’s shoulder and only woke up when the flight attendant came by to take away the drink cups they’d used. She stretched sleepily, and Jo put her phone away.

“Man, are we nearly there already?” Yaz asked. 

“Almost,” Jo told her, glancing out the window over her.

“Shortest five hour flight ever,” Yaz told her with a yawn, watching out the window as the plane landed and taxied to the gate.

They dragged their bags off the plane and several concourses away to their next flight, stopping for lunch in a food court and making up wild stories for the people hurrying past on their way to their gates. Yaz Facetimed her mum from the restaurant with Jo to let her know that she was finally on her way home, and texted Ryan. 

The sun was sinking below the horizon when they boarded their flight home several hours later. Yaz gripped Jo’s hand as the ground melted away beneath their plane into the dark, and the long flight began. Yaz stared out the window as the lights from the city grew smaller and smaller, tiny pinpricks of light that faded into a pitch black over the ocean, and about thirty minutes into the flight Yaz had to close the window shade to avoid thinking about the endless dark abyss outside the window. There was something extremely creepy about knowing that there were no cities, no land, nothing but empty sky and empty sea surrounding them as far as the eye could see. Jo raised the armrest between them so Yaz could rest her head on her shoulder, and Yaz snuggled in, letting Jo play with the loose strands of hair that fell out of her bun. The deep sadness from earlier wormed its way back into Yaz’s heart in the dark and quiet of the plane. She could still smell the hotel shampoo in Jo’s hair, and she wished she could save it to her memory like a file on a computer, that she could revisit whenever she wanted. _God_ , she didn’t want her time with Jo to end.

“Y’know what we should do?” Jo asked quietly in Yaz’s ear, her voice low enough that it would be hidden by the hum of the plane. Something about her tone and proximity sent shivers down Yaz’s spine- which was very frustrating, given that their bed was in a hotel room thousands of miles behind them, in a room to which they no longer had a key.

“Hmmm?” Yaz responded, raising her head just enough to turn and look at Jo.

“Join the mile high club.”

Yaz laughed aloud, too loudly in the dark and sleepy plane, then quickly tried to stifle the noise in the quiet as both arousal and nervousness shot straight through her system. “Seriously?” she asked, trying to keep her voice quiet enough that only Jo would hear.

Even in the dark, she could see Jo’s frisky little smirk. “Why not?”

Yaz felt her mouth go dry, despite being _very_ intrigued. It hadn’t even occurred to her that the mile high club was an option. “What if someone finds us?”

“How? Half the plane is asleep already,” Jo pointed out, and Yaz looked around to see that she was right. Several of their fellow passengers had on sleep masks. The majority of the remaining passengers had their eyes closed, earbuds in. One or two people were completely engrossed in a book, illuminated with a small reading light. “I’ll go first, you wait like three minutes, and then come join me,” Jo murmured in Yaz’s ear, gently ghosting her fingers over the skin on Yaz’s hand in a decidedly teasing manner. “We’ll have to be quiet though.”

Yaz could already feel the heat pooling between her legs, her heart pounding. She didn’t even know if she would be able to relax enough to come in such a public place, but she suddenly very much wanted to find out. She found herself nodding, hardly able to believe what she was agreeing to.

Jo grinned and quietly got up, making her way down the aisle to the back of the plane. Yaz watched her go, wondering how on earth she was able to look so calm and collected while Yaz was left behind nearly jumping out of her skin. 

It might have been the longest three minutes of Yaz’s life, and yet somehow she felt like she was making her way down the aisle of the plane _way_ too soon. Surely all these people she was walking past were going to notice her, so soon after Jo had just walked by. Someone was going to know what they were up to. Yet, even though she avoided looking directly at anyone- her cheeks were burning way too warmly to be able to look anyone in the eye- she couldn’t help but notice Jo had been right about nearly everyone being asleep. Heck, she could have done the Macarena down the aisle and she doubted anyone would have noticed. 

She reached the back of the plane and was just wondering which of the two restrooms Jo was in when one of the doors cracked open and Jo peeked out. Yaz grinned and stepped in with her, although there was barely room enough for one person in the tiny compartment. “I hope you’ve given some thought to the logistics of this while you were waiting,” Yaz whispered to her, sliding in against the tiny sink as Jo slid the door lock shut.

Jo was having a very hard time not descending into giggles. “It is a lot smaller in here than I thought,” she whispered back, already pressed bodily up against Yaz… not that they had much choice. “We’ll just have to get a bit creative,” she said, lifting Yaz onto the tiny counter and stepping between her legs, sliding a hand under Yaz’s clothes and straight down to her center.

Yaz wrapped her arms around Jo’s neck and pulled her into a kiss, sighing into it as Jo’s gentle touches became quickly more insistent. Any worries Yaz might have had about being too nervous to come vanished almost instantly as she felt Jo snake her other hand up her shirt and pull the cup of her bra down, gently tweaking a nipple as she pushed her fingers inward. Every sense was heightened, their bodies pressed together with barely a sliver of space between them, the need to keep quiet intensified every sensation. Yaz whined into their kisses, counting on the hum of the plane to drown out her sounds, her body winding up embarrassingly fast.

“God, you’re hot like this,” Jo murmured against the corner of her mouth, pumping her fingers harder.

Yaz stifled a cry into Jo’s shoulder as her body shook with an intense release, wave after wave of pleasure rolling through her until she finally relaxed and Jo slid her fingers out of her. Yaz kissed her deeply, fumbling with the buttons of Jo’s trousers before realizing that she was in no position to achieve the angle she wanted. 

Yaz frowned and wriggled forward. “Yeah, this isn’t going to work,” she muttered. “Not like this, anyway. Let’s trade places.” 

Jo and Yaz shuffled around, but before Jo could turn around and hop up on the tiny counter, Yaz had an idea. “Wait. Let’s try this,” she murmured into Jo’s ear from behind, and Jo paused.

“What?” Jo asked, turning to look at Yaz over her shoulder.

Yaz grinned and wrapped her arms around Jo from behind, slipping her fingers beneath Jo’s waistband and down until she could feel her warmth, and Jo’s breath hitched. Yaz slid her hand down even further, curling her fingers as though she was beckoning Jo’s feelings forward.

Jo sighed and propped her knee up on the tiny countertop, quietly begging Yaz not to stop. Yaz wrapped her free arm around Jo’s waist and pulled her closer, her fingers dipping down into Jo, kissing and lightly nipping at the exposed skin on Jo’s neck that was so conveniently right in front of her face, and Yaz slowly, torturously, even, worked her up into a high that she genuinely worried someone was going to hear.

Several minutes later, Yaz slid out of the tiny restroom and as quietly as possible, made her way back to her seat, trying desperately not to grin the whole way. Walking back from a trip to the airplane restroom grinning like a loon was definitely not normal, but she noticed Jo was grinning from ear to ear too when she returned to her seat and laced her fingers with Yaz’s.

“Way to be subtle,” Yaz whispered to her teasingly as the woman in the seat across the aisle shot them an irritated glance and readjusted her headphones, closing her eyes again.

“Don’t lie, you loved it,” Jo teased her back.

“Well, yeah, but nobody’s that happy coming back from the toilet unless they have a reason.”

“Maybe that reason is finally getting rid of last night’s steak. They don’t know me.” 

“Oh my _god_ , Jo.”

Jo laughed and raised the armrest between them, then wrapped her arm around Yaz and pulled her into her side, pressing a light kiss into Yaz’s hair. 

Yaz snuggled in. “Were you serious about travelling with me?” she asked suddenly, as the thought occurred to her.

“Definitely,” Jo replied. “Where do you want to go?”

“Mmmm.” Yaz closed her eyes, thinking. “Everywhere.”

Jo chuckled. “Sounds good to me.” She played with a strand of Yaz’s hair. “Seriously, though, where do you want to go first? If we were to pick someplace to go in the summer when classes are out.”

Yaz thought about it. “Someplace tropical, if it’s going to be the summertime.”

“That can be arranged,” Jo told her with a grin.

With no light to read by and wanting to avoid draining her phone battery, Yaz drifted off to sleep again, lulled into dreams of her and Jo sprawled out on white sand beaches and palm trees.


	9. December 28/29

It wasn’t until the plane thumped onto the runway that Yaz woke up.

“Did I sleep the whole flight?” she asked with a frown, thoroughly disoriented. The sun was peeking over the horizon, she hadn’t slept very well, and her internal clock was telling her it was still the middle of the night. 

“Nearly,” Jo answered her, stuffing her belongings into the bag under her seat.

“Did you sleep at all?” Yaz asked, noting how tired she looked.

“Nah,” Jo replied, giving Yaz a sympathetic smile when Yaz looked disappointed for her. “I can’t usually sleep on planes anyway,” she shrugged.

Yaz made sure her phone and book were safely in her bag, too, before they followed the stream of passengers off the plane and into the terminal. It was hard to believe she was _home_ , like really home, after the events of the past week.

She and Jo were quiet as they claimed their luggage and dragged their belongings out into the cool air where cars and shuttles were waiting for their passengers. “Well, I think that’s the shuttle to my hotel,” Jo told her, nodding towards a bus a few car lengths away. 

Yaz nodded. “Text me when you get there so I know you’re safe,” she said, sliding her arms around Jo’s waist and giving her a quick kiss before pulling her into a full hug.

“I will,” Jo said into her hair, hugging her back. “Say hi to your mum for me.”

Yaz smiled and stepped back. “You’re welcome to come hang out with us, if you want. Mum’s usually pretty chill about having visitors.”

Jo offered a small smile. “I’ll let you know. Lots to do, now I’m back.”

Yaz nodded and opened her mouth to ask for more details, but the shuttle driver stepped out of the bus, hands on hips, squinting around as he tried to gauge who he was there to pick up. “Anyone here going to the Hampton?” he shouted into the crowd impatiently.

“Yes! Me!” Jo waved at him, rolling her eyes at Yaz. “Someone’s impatient,” she commented under her breath, giving Yaz one more quick kiss before gathering her bags and stomping off towards the shuttle. 

Yaz watched her go wistfully, wishing she’d been a bit more assertive. She’d had two whole flights… long periods of nothing to do at the airports yesterday… hell, a whole week prior with Jo, where she could have gotten more information about Jo’s plans and invited her to stay with her while they were back home. Jo’s shuttle bus pulled away, and Yaz was left in the cold, bright sunlight, chewing her lip in annoyance at herself.

“Hey! Yaz!” Ryan’s voice cut above the din of the passengers surrounding her, and she turned to see him hanging halfway out the drivers side door of his car as he waved to get her attention. Her face split into a grin and she dragged her luggage over, then wrapped her best friend in a giant hug as he stepped fully out of the car. “I was wondering if we were ever going to get to see you!” Ryan teased her.

“I know! I finally made it! And I didn’t even have to walk,” Yaz laughed into his winter coat. 

“Where’s your girlfriend?” Ryan asked, looking around pointedly, and Yaz punched his arm playfully.

“She already caught the shuttle to her hotel, jerkface. And she’s not my girlfriend. Technically.” Yaz couldn’t quite hide her grin, however hard she tried, and she turned instead to haul her bags into the backseat of Ryan’s car.

“Uh-huh. Your face says otherwise,” Ryan teased.

“Shut up.”

“So it _was_ a layover!”

“Oh my god, Ryan, shut up! Why are we even friends?” Yaz punched his arm again, but there was no venom behind it. She slid into the passenger seat and turned the heater up as high as it would go, holding her fingers in front of the vents.

“So, it’s 6:30 in the morning. D’you want me to drop you off at your parents’ place this early, or do you want to get a coffee first?” Ryan put the car into gear and pulled into traffic.

“Coffee sounds amazing,” Yaz told him.

Ryan caught her up on all the things she’d missed in the past year as they drove to a coffee shop and Yaz paid for their coffees and croissants as thanks for getting her from the airport. He filled her in on the many adventures of some of their mutual friends, the promotion he’d gotten at work- he was going to be the garage manager, as of next week- and how he and his step-granddad seemed to be getting along a bit better on their own these days, despite the absence of his nan. Yaz filled Ryan in on what it was like living in San Fransisco, living near a beach and in such a larger city than the one they’d grown up in. She told him all about the trap they’d set for her ex, and the hikes she and Jo had gone on in Colorado. “It was incredible,” she told him, showing him pictures of the mountain views on her phone.

“It sounds like it,” Ryan agreed with a smile.

Just as she was putting her phone away, it buzzed with a picture of an average looking hotel room.

_Jo (7:42 am): [1 attachment: IMG9869]_   
_Jo (7:42 am): made it to the hotel. Of course there’s two beds now there’s only one of me_

Yaz laughed, fingers hovering over her phone, trying to decide what to reply.

“Oooh, is that her? Let me see!” Ryan grabbed for her phone mischievously. 

Yaz laughed and held her phone out of his reach. “Really? What if that message was something you really, really don’t want to see?”

That thought didn’t seem to have occurred to Ryan, and he crinkled his nose. “Is it?”

“No, you donut,” she teased him, getting up and sliding into the booth next to him, moving their coffee mugs and plates over so she could get a good selfie of the two of them enjoying their breakfast and sent it to Jo to let her know she’d connected with her friends and was no longer waiting at the airport.

“Seriously, Yaz, you’ve got it bad,” Ryan told her, watching her type out her text. “You’re as bad right now as you were in high school.”

Yaz shrugged, unable to keep herself from smiling and really, when it came down to it, she didn’t want to. “Yeah, well. I really like her.”

“Clearly.” He grinned too. “I’m glad for you. It’s about time you found someone who’s not a total arse.” He polished off the rest of his coffee. “You should have her come hang out with us while you guys are in town.”

Yaz looked up as she put her phone away, surprised. “Really? Why? You want to grill her or something?”

“No, I just know you’re going to want to see her again soon and the rest of us would like to spend some time with you, too,” he teased her. “If you’re a package deal now, so be it.”

“Oh my _god_ , Ryan,” Yaz rolled her eyes as she finished off her coffee and stood up. “You’ve got to start dating someone so I can tease the heck out of you, too.”

“Actually…” He filled her in on the girl he’d been seeing the past few weeks as they got back in the car and he took her home. They stopped, briefly, at the memorial site for his nan, and once again Yaz wished she had been here to say goodbye, to help Ryan through that terrible time. Half of her hated that she’d had to spend so much time in San Francisco, away from home… but the other half of her was really loving what had come out of it, so far. 

Ryan helped Yaz haul her luggage up to her parents’ flat. Her mum was already off to work, but her dad was ready and waiting to welcome her home with food. He insisted Ryan stay for his second breakfast, and the three of them had tea and freshly made orotti with honey and mango chutney. Funnily enough, at this time last year, Yaz would have been less than enthused about her dad’s cooking, but today, it really hit the spot.

Hakim filled them in on his latest conspiracy theories he had put together while he cooked and they ate, and they humored him by asking questions until he was certain he was on to something. Or, in one notable case, he had put his spatula down slowly as he realized he needed much more evidence to make his theory plausible, and his expression was so funny Yaz and Ryan found themselves mimicking it for at least the next half hour. 

Ryan left to go to work a couple hours later, and Yaz spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon hanging out with her dad and catching up, planning out when they were going to go see Sonya and the baby over the next couple days and things they could do in between her parents’ work shifts, and when Najia came home from work they ate yet again before Yaz absolutely couldn’t keep her eyes open and crashed right on the couch.

It was late evening when her parents woke her up to say they were going to head to bed, but she was welcome to stay up with the TV on as long as she wanted. “I’ve only been waiting about 10 years for that kind of permission,” Yaz joked as they said their goodnights and headed down the hall to their bedroom.

Eagerly, Yaz checked her phone to see if Jo had texted her back at all during the day, but she had no new messages from anyone. She settled in to watch a movie, hoping that it would put her back to sleep, but no such luck. Yaz stayed awake until at least 3am, switching between reading a book, watching something on TV, and staring at her phone and wishing Jo had texted her back with at least something.

When Yaz woke up in the guest room the next morning, tired and groggy, she felt like she’d already slept half the day away and promptly decided that someday, she would have to move back here, closer to her family. California was nice and all, but between the travel delay and the time difference she was absolutely over it. She checked her phone for messages- nothing- and tossed her hair up into a bun.

She wandered out to the kitchen where her mum was cooking. “Sonya’s going to bring the baby by today,” Najia told her as she handed Yaz a giant cup of coffee.

Yaz took a sip and it felt like the coffee was awakening her soul. “I can’t wait,” she replied.

Mid afternoon, Sonya and her husband Jagan tripped through the doors, hauling a stroller and several large baby bags, and it struck Yaz as an awful lot of equipment for such a tiny human. Then again, Sonya had always been a little bit extra, it made perfect sense that they’d bring all Sai’s earthly possessions with them for a day trip. “Yaaaaaaaaz!” Sonya wrapped her arms around her sister as soon as the door was shut behind them. “I haven’t seen you in forever!!”

“I know!” Yaz squealed, squeezing Sonya back. “I’ve missed you all so much!” She gave a quick wave to her brother in law before bending over the stroller to look at the baby. “And this must be Sai. Can I hold him?” she asked immediately.

Sonya laughed. “Of course.”

Yaz reached into the stroller and picked up the baby. He gave a disgruntled whine as she shifted his weight into her arms, and within seconds he had a handful of Yaz’s hair gripped tightly in his tiny fist.

“I should have warned you about the hair,” Sonya told her. “You might not get that back.”

Yaz laughed. “That’s okay, he can keep it,” she said, sitting down on the sofa and snuggling the baby to her chest. “He can have anything he wants, isn’t that right?” she asked him, looking down into his little face and watching him blink owlishly back up at her. “I’m going to spoil you rotten.”

Sonya grinned. “Well, you’ll have to get in line. Mum and Dad have already started. And so have we. As you can clearly see.” She gestured to the mountain of baby stuff they had brought with them.

“Yeah, what’s with all the stuff?” Yaz asked. “He’s brought more stuff than I have.”

Sonya shrugged. “He gets cranky easily. We figured rather than letting him cry all day, we’d just cover all our bases and bring anything he might need.”

“He hasn’t been the easiest baby,” Najia agreed. “But then again, Sonya, neither were you,” she teased. “Retribution.”

“Do you think if I sincerely apologize, the universe will let him sleep through the night?” Sonya joked back.

Yaz grinned as she listened to them banter and sat down on the couch with the baby. True, his face was screwed up in an undeniably crabby expression, but he had already won her over completely. He was so new, yet so familiar in a way. His eyes were exactly like Sonya’s in shape and color, but his hair had a bit of curl to it like his father’s. And the way the corners of his mouth turned down and his eyebrows flattened into thin lines when he frowned looked exactly like her dad when he was thinking way too hard about something. Yaz grinned. She was going to love being an aunt.

Yaz only relinquished her hold on the baby once during the day, to let Sonya feed him and attempt to get him to have a nap in his stroller. He was having absolutely none of it, though, and eventually Yaz reclaimed him for the rest of the afternoon.

The afternoon and evening flew by, solidifying Yaz’s earlier thought that she needed to move at least back to the same country as her family. It was far too early, in her opinion, when Sonya’s head drooped onto Jagan’s shoulder in the cozy glow of the room. “We should probably get going,” he said softly, stifling a yawn.

“Mmm,” Sonya grumbled in response.

Yaz glanced down at the baby, who was wide awake but snuggled comfortably in her arms, quietly watching her every move. “I’m not ready to give him up though,” she admitted. “And neither of us are tired yet. Would you like me to watch him for you tonight?” she asked, grinning as Sonya and Jagan looked at each other, knowing it would be massively appealing to them to get a full night’s sleep.

“He’s usually up nearly all night, Yaz, we can’t ask you to do that,” Sonya told her hesitantly.

Yaz scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I’m still 8 hours behind you guys, I won’t be tired until everyone else is waking up anyway. And you guys brought basically everything he could need.”

Sonya paused for only a fraction of a second. “If you’re sure?”

Yaz nodded. “Positive. Go get some rest.”

****

Yaz regretted absolutely nothing. Even Najia had commented that Sai was much quieter when Yaz was holding him, even though he still looked a bit cranky most of the time. 

“Good night, let us know if you need anything, sweetheart,” Najia told her as they headed off to bed.

“Night,” Yaz called after her, taking the baby’s hand and waving it too, then settling in on the bed in the guest room. 

It was strange, sleeping in her old room after it had been thoroughly redecorated in her absence. Gone were the light purple walls she’d insisted on at age 12, with the matching yellow and purple comforter on the bed. Her mum had redecorated it in cream and navy, and it felt… different. Not bad, or particularly good, but just new. “What do you think, little man?” she asked the baby as she dug a book out of her bag and found a comfortable position on the bed, arranging the baby so he could snuggle in without blocking her view of the pages. He gave a grumpy little harrumph before stuffing his entire fist in his mouth and grasping the fabric of her shirt in the other.

Yaz grinned and reached for her phone, taking a selfie of the two of them- him snuggled in looking thoroughly disgruntled while she beamed happily. She smiled at the picture and sent it to Jo, hoping it wasn’t so late that she would wake Jo up.

_Yaz (9:42 pm): [1 attachment: IMG9898]_   
_Yaz (9:42 pm): He’s the tiniest crotchety old man I know._

She waited until the progress bar finished trekking its way across the top of the message and the picture showed that it had been delivered along with the message. Yaz stared at the several sent messages that had gone unacknowledged for another minute or two, wondering if Jo was reading it or if she would reply. So far, Jo hadn’t messaged her at all except to let Yaz know she’d made it to her hotel safely yesterday morning, and Yaz had to fight to shove down the disappointment rising in her chest at the screen with no response from Jo forthcoming. It was barely 36 hours since they’d been together and she already felt ghosted.

“How about that, Sai?” she murmured to the baby. “I finally find someone I like and I can’t seem to keep her on the hook.” She brushed the baby’s hair back off his little face. “It’s just not right, hmm?”

Sai burped in response.

“Yeah, I think so too,” Yaz told him with a chuckle, finding a cloth and wiping his mouth. “You know what though?” she asked as she repositioned him. “I’m probably just overthinking this. I mean, I don’t think she slept on the plane, so she probably crashed yesterday after she got to her hotel. And maybe she didn’t want to text me in the middle of the night in case I was sleeping, too. That would make sense, right?” she asked.

Sai crunched his face in a cranky grimace, kicking his tiny feet against Yaz’s thigh as she shifted to try and find a more comfortable position for him, and smiled down at him when he finally made himself comfortable. “Although,” she continued as he stared up at her, “if she’s been awake when I text her, especially this late, why wouldn’t she think she could text me back right then? You don’t think I’m annoying her, do you?”

Yaz watched the baby, as though he was going to answer her, but he just stared back solemnly. “And I have no idea what her plans are now that she’s back home,” she continued. “I should have asked, but I never got the chance.” She paused. “Well, that’s not true. I had several chances, I just chickened out.” She brushed the baby’s hair off his forehead and he closed his eyes, looking marginally less grumpy. “I miss her,” she admitted aloud after a moment of silence. “I miss her probably more than I should after only knowing her a week, but…” she trailed off, twirling a few short strands of his hair around her fingers.

Sai opened his eyes after a moment as though to look for her, screwing up his features and whining crankily. “I’m still here,” she assured him, and he relaxed. “What, are you afraid I’m going to disappear or something? You just like hearing my voice?” she asked, and he stared back up at her, looking very serious. “How about I read my book aloud, will that work for you?” she asked, picking up her book and opening to the page where she left off.

About twenty minutes later, Yaz was certain she’d found the key to Sai’s good mood. It didn’t seem to matter that she wasn’t reading a kids book, as long as she was talking, he was happy. She even looked over at him at one point to see his face now open and curious as he listened, rather than crunched up crabbily. And the longer she read, the more his eyes drooped until he was fast asleep, drooling onto her shirt.

Yaz very gently took one more selfie, trying not to wake him, and read quietly to herself until she too dozed off.


	10. December 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last, y'all, I have finally finished this thing. I might do an epilogue, someday hahahaha. Now- on to other WIPs!

The key turned easily in the lock, and Jo stepped into the house, her footsteps echoing on the wood floor. The door swung closed behind her, closing a bit too loudly in the empty room.

It was the day she’d been dreading for years, setting foot in her old home for the first time since it had been reduced to ash. Everything had been rebuilt, exactly how it had been, but it wasn’t the same. The wood floors were new and shiny and even, no more creaky board just inside the door that she always managed to step on whether she intended to or not- the one thing that always alerted River that she was home, if River had made it home before her. There was no more hideous wallpaper in the entryway they’d always meant to replace, the new walls had been painted a fresh, even white. Jo could still smell the paint, despite the fact that the paint job had to have been at least a year and a half old. 

She wandered into the kitchen, immediately noticing the absence of the crappy old appliances, instead replaced by sleek stainless steel and granite counters. She ran her fingers over the stone, enjoying the feel of the material. She’d always wanted real granite countertops, and they’d been saving up to do the renovations they wanted. Well, Jo thought with a twinge of bitterness, they’d finally gotten done. 

It wasn’t fair.

Jo put the kitchen behind her, instead climbing up the stairs, the new railing smooth and unblemished under her fingers. The faint smell of wood stain lingered on the stairs, a smell Jo had always rather liked. Her dad had been a tinkerer, always attempting to build something he’d seen in a magazine or some obscure piece of furniture that he suddenly couldn’t live without, much to her mother’s chagrin. The only thing that had turned out even vaguely useable was an old bookcase he’d stained a nice mahogany and given to Jo when she’d moved out. She’d had it right at the top of this very staircase, once, with all her atlases and astronomy charts and things she used for her classes. She glanced at the empty spot where it had been. He would have thought it was a damn shame it had been lost, he would have insisted on building her another after the fire if things had turned out differently.

The bedroom door was only halfway open, and she pushed it all the way open as she stepped inside. The same old view out the window greeted her, but with no curtains to draw to ensure the neighbors couldn’t see straight inside at night when the light was on. The same tiny closet stood in the corner, and for a fraction of a second Jo wondered why they couldn’t have at least deviated from the original floor plans and made that closet bigger. Jo had always been fairly practical and only kept the clothes she wore regularly, but River had a wide variety of slacks and blouses and fancy dresses that had spilled out of the closet, and the fact that it was so small had rankled her on a nearly daily basis. She’d stand in front of the closet every morning in nothing but a towel, lamenting the lack of hanging space while Jo pulled one of her outfits out of the dresser, at which River would ask if she was _sure_ she couldn’t take her shopping? Didn’t Jo get so _tired_ of wearing the same things all the time?

It had been their stupid inside joke, that Jo “only had three outfits”.

It had been so long since anyone had teased her about that. 

She looked up to the ceiling, noticing the shiny new overhead fixture and ceiling fan, remembering the ugly old one she’d hated so much because the decorations holding the fan blades on had looked like ornate, angry faces. It had been the last thing she’d seen before the ceiling had caved in, she’d been wondering why it had suddenly stopped working and had been sort of hoping it had finally broken for good so they’d have an ironclad excuse to replace it. In hindsight, it had probably stopped working because the fire had cut off the electricity going to it. The memory of the fan falling towards her as the ceiling erupted into a hellish burst of flames came back to her in a rush, and she backed out of the bedroom, willing herself to keep her wits about her.

She went back downstairs, noticing how big the sitting room looked without that overstuffed old sofa they’d had. She and River had stayed up all night on that sofa reminiscing about their families the day they got back from River’s parents’ funeral in America. They’d been barely 30 years old, neither of them had expected to be so young when they lost their families. It was one of the things they’d commiserated about that night, Jo having lost her family a few years earlier. If someone had told her, that night, that in the next couple years she’d lose River, too, she’d have refused to believe it.

Jo wandered back into the kitchen and hopped up on one of the fancy new counters, letting her legs dangle over the edge, hands on either side of her knees as she leaned forward and looked at the sleek hardwood floors. This place wasn’t home anymore.

San Francisco wasn’t exactly home, either, despite the years she’d lived there. It had been hard getting to know people at first. She hadn’t been in any mood to go out when she’d first moved, and that had made it hard to make friends. She didn’t feel like she could truly make friends with any of her students, at risk of feeling like such a thing was inappropriate. And she’d been out on a few dates in the past couple years, with women that had rarely moved beyond the first date, as she tended to end the evening at home, alone, with a pint of ice cream and missing River more than ever.

Actually, when Jo thought about it, there were a lot of places on this planet that she loved, but there wasn’t really anywhere that seemed truly like home, somewhere she would always return. It was baffling how she could own this place and have a flat in California, and still feel homeless- when it came down to it, she’d felt homeless since River had died. 

Well… except for just once. 

Jo pulled out her phone and sure enough, Yaz had texted her. A pang of guilt shot through her- they’d texted a bit in the hours after they’d landed, making sure they each had gotten safely to their destinations. Then Jo had passed out in her hotel room, alone, two beds this time but only one person. Jet lag was a hell of a thing to get over, especially with an 8 hour time difference. When she’d finally rejoined the land of the living, she had real estate agents and lawyers to meet with, paperwork to sign… Yaz had texted her several times in the past couple days and Jo had stupidly not replied to any of them. 

_Yaz (12:45 pm): Hey Jo! My friend Ryan and I are going to meet up with some friends at the Tap this evening for new year’s, you’re welcome to join us if you want if you don’t have plans!_

Jo stared at the words on the screen, then up at the empty house in front of her, trying to find the words to reply. Before she had typed a single letter, a knock rang out on the front door.

Jo hopped off the counter and pulled the front door open, plastering a smile on her face as she let the young couple and the real estate agent in. They greeted her enthusiastically, and the young woman- probably a good five or ten years younger than herself, Jo was shocked to realize- began walking through the house one more time, exclaiming over the beautifully stained floors and the elegance of the kitchen. “Don’t you just love granite counters?” she asked enthusiastically, running her hand over the counter Jo had just been sitting on.

Her young husband agreed wholeheartedly, pointing out the features he liked the most, too. Jo watched them wistfully. She and River had done similarly when they’d looked at the place just before buying it- except instead of fawning over the existing features, they’d been excited about the improvements they could make, about finally owning a place they could call their own.

These two were far more at home here now than she was, she realized, and she spoke up softly. “So. Are we ready to get the paperwork out of the way, then?” she asked.

“Definitely,” the young woman answered. 

“Yeah, we’re so glad you could make it before the end of the year,” the young man chipped in. 

Jo smiled politely as the real estate agent walked them through the paperwork they’d be signing, the financing part, the legal part, and everything. Jo signed the bill of sale first, then the woman, then the man, and the two of them were embracing before the ink had dried. Jo’s heart seemed to squeeze in on itself, and she handed them the key to the door. With one last word to the real estate agent to make sure she was no longer needed here, she offered them a quick word of congratulations and excused herself, walking resolutely down the front path to her rental car. She allowed herself one quick glance back at the house as she pulled away, and drove off.

_December 31, 9:19pm_

“You sure you don’t want a beer, Yaz? I’m buying,” Ryan told her, holding his glass aloft as if to indicate what a beer was.

Yaz hesitated. “Well, if you’re buying, how can I say no? Better make it a cider, though, you know I don’t love beer.”

Ryan grinned and spoke with the bartender, then a minute later the bartender slid a full glass towards her. “Thanks,” she told him, tipping the glass in his direction as a cheer. 

“Sure. Thought you could use some cheering up,” he said. “You sure you’re alright?”

Yaz nodded with a little sigh. “Yeah. I’m fine,” she replied forlornly. 

“Still no answer?” Ryan asked knowingly.

Yaz nodded again. “I hope she’s alright. I just, I dunno, I really thought we had something, you know? But maybe I was just reading too much into it.” She shrugged as casually as she could manage. “I mean, we barely knew each other for a week. I suppose I’m just doing my thing where I get attached too fast again,” she joked halfheartedly.

Ryan nodded understandingly. “Well, hey. You got rid of Corey. That’s a pretty great start to next year, don’t you think?” he asked, as always trying to put a positive spin on things.

She put on the biggest smile she could manage. “Defo! I’m so ready to see the end of this year. Next year’s going to be so much better.”

“There it is!” Ryan clinked their glasses together, and a group of their friends leaned over the bar to refresh their drinks and beg Ryan and Yaz to come play pool while they waited for the countdown.

Yaz absolutely smoked Danny Biswas in their first game, and he was desperately trying to recoup his losses in their second game- and getting almost nowhere in that venture- when she glanced up from her shot to see the one thing she’d been hoping to see all night.

Dark jeans and a black turtleneck only made her blonde hair stand out even more than it already did, a small silver necklace shining above the fabric. Jo was just inside the doors of the pub, glancing around and looking a bit lost, but she was by far the most beautiful thing Yaz had seen all day. Yaz stood up on her tiptoes, her pool shot abandoned, and waved an arm in the air. “Jo!” she called over the noise of the pub.

Jo’s head immediately turned towards the sound of her voice and a giant grin broke across her face. Yaz dropped her pool cue and dashed around the side of the table, wrapping her arms around Jo and breathing in the sweet scent of her shampoo. “I didn’t think you were going to come!” she said as they pulled apart.

Jo smiled. “Well, here I am,” she said, hungrily taking in the sight of Yaz.

The two just kind of stood there grinning stupidly at each other until Danny interrupted. “So do I get to beat you at pool this time or what?” 

“Nah, I’ll take over for her,” Ryan jumped in, picking up Yaz’s abandoned pool cue and giving Yaz a wink. “It’s only fair to give you a fighting chance,” he told Danny.

Yaz grinned and took Jo’s hands. “C’mon, let’s get you a drink,” she said, pulling Jo towards the bar, instructing the bartender to add her beer to the open tab and sliding onto the barstool next to Jo’s. “I’m so glad to see you, for a minute there I wondered if something happened to you,” Yaz told her happily.

Jo smiled again, this time apologetically. “I’m really sorry I never responded to any of your texts, Yaz. It’s been a rough couple of days.”

“Awww.” Yaz laid an arm across the back of Jo’s chair and rubbed her back. “D’you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Jo gave her a small smile. “Er, well, I sold my house.”

Yaz frowned, confused. “Your house?” she asked, before the implication sunk in. “Oh. _OH_. Wow,” she said, kicking herself for not realizing what she’d meant in the first place. 

“Yeah,” Jo gave a small, humorless laugh. “Wow is right. I never thought…” she paused and took a drink of her beer, stalling. 

Yaz studied her for a minute. “Have you been alone this whole time, then? You’ve had to do all of this by yourself?”

Jo glanced up at her without saying anything, but it told Yaz all she needed to know.

Yaz took Jo’s free hand in both of hers. “I wish you’d called me,” she said softly. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

Jo smiled apologetically. “Maybe I should have, I just didn’t even think to. I guess I’ve just been alone for so long, I forgot that I could.” she shrugged. “I realized this afternoon, though, I know we haven’t known each other all that long, but…” she glanced up to gauge Yaz’s reaction. “Last week was the happiest I’ve been in so long, Yaz. You feel like home to me, and I’m not ready for that to end. And I don’t know what your plans are, whether you’re staying in California or if you’re going to come back here, or if you just want a travel buddy on your breaks… whatever works for you, Yaz I just want more of this. Of you,” she amended.

Yaz broke into a grin. “How did I get so lucky?” she asked, pulling Jo into a kiss that tasted of beer and peppermint chapstick, nearly sliding off her barstool as she pressed their bodies together as closely as might be allowed in public. “C’mon,” she said after a minute. “Why don’t I introduce you to my friends while we wait for the countdown? They’re gonna love you.”

Ryan and Danny immediately welcomed Jo into the group like an old friend. They teamed up to teach Jo how to play pool against Yaz, leading to Yaz’s first and only loss of the game all night. Jo promised to smoke them all at darts, too, and made good on her promise just before midnight. 

It was 11:58pm, and a crowd was gathering around the television to watch the countdown. Yaz and Jo found themselves near the back of the crowd, and Yaz slipped her hand into Jo’s. “You know what?” Yaz asked as the countdown started.

“Hmm?” Jo responded.

“I think we’re going to have a really great year.”

Jo grinned. “I’m counting on it,” she said, leaning in to kiss Yaz as the countdown finished, fireworks blossomed across the television screen and the room was filled with shouts of “Happy New Year!” 

Yaz kissed her back, raising a hand to Jo’s face to pull her even closer. “Me, too.”


End file.
